1960 United States presidential election (Americana)

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 Republican vice president, Richard Nixon defeated, Democratic Senator, John F. Kennedy. This was the first election in which 50 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.

When Nixon was elected, he became the youngest president elected to the presidency at 47 years, while Theodore Roosevelt was still the youngest President at 42 years and 10 months when he became president in September 1901 following the death of president William McKinley. No matter which candidate won, America would elect its first President born in the 20th century (Nixon was born in 1913, Kennedy in 1917).

Nixon faced little opposition in the Republican race to succeed popular incumbent Dwight D. Eisenhower. Kennedy, a junior 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.