November 8, 1960

1960 United States presidential election

Kennedy narrowly wins the 1960 presidential election

Americans went to bed without knowing who had won — and fifteen electors ended up voting for a senator who had run no national campaign.

No winner by nightfall

On 8 November 1960, American voters chose presidential electors pledged principally to the Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson or to the Republicans Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

Election-night returns showed an exceptionally close contest and settled nothing before the day ended. The ballots were not tallied sufficiently to resolve the result until about noon on 9 November.

Nixon sent his formal concession telegram that day, after Minnesota's electoral votes put Kennedy over the majority.

303, 219 and 15

The final Electoral College result was Kennedy 303, Nixon 219, and Virginia senator Harry F. Byrd 15 — six from Alabama, eight from Mississippi and one from Oklahoma.

Those fifteen were not simply faithless electors. Fourteen had been elected as unpledged Democrats; only the Oklahoma elector defected from a Nixon pledge.

Kennedy, at 43, became the youngest person elected president — though not the youngest to serve, since Theodore Roosevelt entered office at 42 on William McKinley's death.

A popular vote nobody can compute exactly

Alabama voters selected individual electors from a mixed Democratic slate holding five Kennedy-pledged and six unpledged candidates, so no single national Kennedy-versus-Nixon total follows from the returns.

The JFK Library and American Presidency Project accounting gives Kennedy 34,226,731 votes to Nixon's 34,108,157 — a margin of 118,574, about 0.17 points. Other compilations produce 112,827, or even a Nixon plurality, by allocating Alabama differently.

Any precise national margin should say how it treats that ballot.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 8 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The election date and Electoral College outcome are secure, but the exact national popular-vote total is not uniquely calculable because Alabama voters selected individual electors from a mixed Democratic slate containing five Kennedy-pledged and six unpledged candidates.
The quoted 118,574-vote margin follows the JFK Library and American Presidency Project accounting. Other compilations produce 112,827 or even a Nixon plurality by allocating Alabama’s Democratic votes differently.
Calling Kennedy “elected” on November 8 is normal shorthand. Constitutionally, voters chose electors; the electors voted later and Congress counted their votes.