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The 1960 United States presidential election was the 44th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. In a closely contested election, incumbent Vice-President Richard Nixon defeated the Democratic Party nominee, United States Senator John F. Kennedy. This was the first election in which fifty states participated, and the last in which the District of Columbia did not, marking the first participation of Alaska and Hawaii. This made it the only presidential election where the threshold for victory was 269 electoral votes. It was also the first election in which an incumbent president was ineligible to run for a third term because of the term limits established by the 22nd Amendment.

Nixon faced little opposition in the Republican race to succeed popular incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower. Kennedy, a junior U.S. senator from Massachusetts, established himself as the Democratic front-runner with his strong performance in the 1960 Democratic primaries, including a key victory in West Virginia over Senator Hubert Humphrey. He defeated Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson on the first presidential ballot of the 1960 Democratic National Convention, and asked Johnson to serve as his running mate. The issue of the Cold War dominated the election, as tensions were high between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Nixon won a 296 to 226 Electoral College victory, and he won the national popular vote by 1,018,720, a margin of 1.48 percent. Fourteen unpledged electors from Mississippi and Alabama cast their vote for Senator Harry F. Byrd, as did a faithless elector from Oklahoma. The 1960 presidential election was the closest election since 1916, and this closeness can be explained by a number of factors. Kennedy benefited from the economic recession of 1957–1958, which hurt the standing of the incumbent Republican Party, and he had the advantage of 17 million more registered Democrats than Republicans. Furthermore, the new votes that Kennedy gained among Roman Catholics almost neutralized the new votes Nixon gained among Protestants. Nixon's advantages came from Eisenhower's popularity, as well as the economic prosperity of the past eight years. Kennedy's campaigning skills decisively outmatched Nixon's, who exhausted time and resources campaigning in all fifty states, while Kennedy focused on campaigning in populous swing states. Kennedy emphasized his youth, while Nixon focused heavily on his experience. Kennedy relied on Johnson to hold the South, and used television effectively. Despite his momentum, Kennedy lost the popular vote and the election, albeit by a narrow margin. This election saw a realignment in among white voters in Southern states, which some in the Democratic Party blamed for Kennedy's loss. Following the election, Southern Democrats blamed the party bosses for the defeat and began a campaign for a Southern candidate for 1964.