AHC: Make Nixon WIN in 1960

Mad Bad Rabbit

Mad Bad Rabbit

Inferus said:
JFK doesn't choose LBJ as his running mate, instead choosing Stuart Symington creating a division in the ranks and potentially alienating Southern Democrats.
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Especially plausible since his brother Bobby didn't get along with LBJ at all.

"Fear and Loathing in the White House"
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/26/reviews/971026.26oshinkt.html
As Jeff Shesol notes in ''Mutual Contempt,'' a penetrating and richly detailed account of the ''feud'' that shaped the 60's, [Robert] Kennedy despised Johnson with a ferocity that startled many observers, while Johnson harbored fears of Kennedy that bordered on paranoia.
...
The Robert Kennedy-Lyndon Johnson feud took on a life of its own. With little thought (and for reasons that still are unclear), John Kennedy chose Johnson to be his running mate. When news of this selection enraged key Northern liberals, Robert Kennedy was dispatched to Johnson's hotel suite to persuade him to withdraw. He failed in his task, but did earn Johnson's enmity as a ''grandstanding little runt.''
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Kerguelen

Kerguelen

Rockefeller also declined many of Nixon's requests to but him on the bottom of the ticket. If he said yes, then Nixon could've won New York which in OTL, he lost by about 5%.
 

David T

Kerguelen said:
Rockefeller also declined many of Nixon's requests to but him on the bottom of the ticket. If he said yes, then Nixon could've won New York which in OTL, he lost by about 5%.
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I've always doubted that having Rocky as VP nominee would be enough to carry the ticket to victory in New York. Most people who have studied the "home state advantage" a VP candidate has have concluded that it is rather small, especially in large states. An extreme view is that it is *zero* except in small states: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-vice-president-qa-20160702-snap-htmlstory.html A contrary view is that "Overall, we find that vice presidential candidates add an average of 2.7 points in their home states. In crucial swing states, they added 2.2 points." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-actually-do-win-votes-in-their-home-states/ Even on the latter view, Nixon-Rockefeller would fall short in New York. New York had a large number of Catholic, Jewish, and African American voters--three groups heavily pro-JFK. Not that many people in these groups didn't like Rocky, but I doubt that they would vote for Nixon just because Rockefeller was his running mate.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
David T said:
I've always doubted that having Rocky as VP nominee would be enough to carry the ticket to victory in New York. Most people who have studied the "home state advantage" a VP candidate has have concluded that it is rather small, especially in large states. An extreme view is that it is *zero* except in small states: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-vice-president-qa-20160702-snap-htmlstory.html A contrary view is that "Overall, we find that vice presidential candidates add an average of 2.7 points in their home states. In crucial swing states, they added 2.2 points." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-actually-do-win-votes-in-their-home-states/ Even on the latter view, Nixon-Rockefeller would fall short in New York. New York had a large number of Catholic, Jewish, and African American voters--three groups heavily pro-JFK. Not that many people in these groups didn't like Rocky, but I doubt that they would vote for Nixon just because Rockefeller was his running mate.
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Based on your data here, though, Rocky might have helped Nixon enough to carry NJ. After all, NJ and NY are probably very similar in terms of culture, values, et cetera; thus, it probably wouldn't have been implausible for Rocky to give Nixon, say, a 0.5% boost (and a 0.5% decrease in support for JFK) in NJ.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Kerguelen said:
Rockefeller also declined many of Nixon's requests to but him on the bottom of the ticket. If he said yes, then Nixon could've won New York which in OTL, he lost by about 5%.
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Carrying New Jersey with Rocky as VP seems more likely; the margin there was much smaller than in New York.
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

1960 was such a crapshoot that you can have anything happen, have it be realistic, and put whatever mcguffin you want on top of it to try to explain it. But the truth is that it could have gone either way no matter what. Kennedy almost won California for goodness sake, and the only reason we don't split hairs on that like we do on Illinois and Texas is that it didn't happen. With Symington, Kennedy had a shot all the same at California, and states X, Y and Z. All the combinations of close states are possible, and that does not even mention states of greater margins of victory/defeat on election day that could be excused as going to the other candidate.
 
Jonathan

Jonathan

What if Nixon's first choice for running mate, Nelson Rockefeller had accepted the nomination bringing a few wavering liberals away from Kennedy
 
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