1960 United States presidential election in New York

← 1956 November 8, 1960 1964 →
Turnout	66.9%[1] 1.0pp
Nominee John F. Kennedy Richard Nixon Party Democratic Republican Alliance Liberal Home state Massachusetts California Running mate Lyndon B. Johnson Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Electoral vote 45 0 Popular vote 3,830,085 3,446,419 Percentage 52.53% 47.27%
County results Kennedy   50–60%   60–70% Nixon   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%

The1960 United States presidential election in New York took place on November 8, 1960. All 50 states were part of the1960 United States presidential election. Voters chose 45 electors to theElectoral College, which selected thepresident andvice president.

New York was won byDemocraticSenatorJohn F. Kennedy ofMassachusetts, who was running against incumbentRepublicanVice PresidentRichard Nixon. Kennedy was running withTexasSenator, and his strongest opponent in the1960 Democratic Party presidential primaries,Lyndon B. Johnson for vice president, and Nixon ran with internationally popular formerUnited States Ambassador to the United NationsHenry Cabot Lodge Jr.

Kennedy won New York with 52.53% of the vote to Nixon's 47.27%, a victory margin of 5.26%. New York weighed in for this election as 5% more Democratic than the national average. The presidential election of 1960 was a verypartisan election for New York, with 99.8% of the electorate voting for either the Democratic or the Republican Parties.^[2] In typical form for the time, the highly populated centers ofNew York City,Buffalo, andAlbany, voted primarilyDemocratic, while the suburban areas such asNassau andWestchester and the ruralcounties in New York turned out for Nixon as theRepublican candidate.

Kennedy won the election in New York by a solid 5-point margin, representing a dramatic shift toward the Democratic Party in the state: just four years earlier,Dwight Eisenhower had carried New York State for the Republicans with over 60% of the vote. The results of this election in New York are typical of the nationwide trend of the urbanization of the Democratic Party, and Kennedy's dominance in heavily populated New York City was a vital component to his victory in the state. Kennedy took 62.62% of the overall vote in New York City, to Nixon's 37.04%, and carried four out of five boroughs. Kennedy's victory inQueens, in the midst of a virtual tie nationwide, marked a dramatic turning point for the heavily populated borough's political leanings.

Nixon for his part ran on a platform of continuing the "peace and prosperity" felt throughout the United States underPresident Eisenhower, which gained him popularity in the developing regions of theWest andPacific States, while Kennedy attained his popularity in urban regions, in part, due to hisprogressive stand on international politics.^[3] This included taking a stronger stance with theSoviet Union, which was a very important issue to many city-dwellers, fearing annihilation during the height of thepost-nuclear age.

The electors of New York were vital to Kennedy's overall victory, as he defeated Nixon 303–219 in theUnited States Electoral College. Had Nixon carried New York, then all other things being equal he would have won pluralities in both the popular and electoral vote. However, the Republican nominee would have still finished two votes short of an overall majority in the Electoral College, as he would have had a total of 265 of the 267 pledged electors needed to win compared to 258 for Kennedy. The 14unpledged electors ofMississippi andAlabama would have held the balance of power in the Electoral College (unable to influence the overall result, these electors opted to cast their votes in favor ofVirginia SenatorHarry F. Byrd).

1960 was the last US presidential election in whichNew York State had the highest population of any state in theUnited States. In November 1962, the state ofCalifornia would overtake New York as the most populous state in the nation, thus ending New York's tenure of being the most populous state after approximately 150 years. However,New York State still had more people who would cast votes in the1964 presidential election compared to the number of people who would do so inCalifornia.

Kennedy won the city ofSyracuse, which had not supported a Democratic presidential nominee since 1944, while Kennedy cut deeply into the Republican majority inOnondaga County, where a 46.84% Republican majority in the county in 1956 was reduced to an 8.24% Republican majority in 1960.^[4][5]

• Albany
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• United States presidential elections in New York
• Civil Rights Movement
• Conservative Coalition
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• Presidency of John F. Kennedy
• Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson
• The Cold War

• Williams, John (1961)."Aspects of the American Presidential Election of 1960".Australian Quarterly.33 (1). Australian Institute of Policy and Science:25–36.doi:10.2307/20633678.JSTOR 20633678.

• 1960 United States presidential election by state
• United States presidential elections in New York (state)
• 1960 New York (state) elections

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