It is widely known that the Democrats did better in the November 1962 election than the party controlling the White House typically does in a midterm election. The Democrats lost only four seats in the House and gained four in the Senate, while neither party gained in the number of governors elected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_elections,_1962 Because the elections were held shortly after the successful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis (at least it was successful to the American public, which did not know about the secret deal to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey) it has seemed natural to assume that the Democrats' relatively good showing was the result of that resolution.
An extreme example of the "Cuban Missile Crisis saved the Democrats" thesis may be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1962: "House Democrats were expected to lose their majority, but the resolution over the Cuban Missile Crisis just a few weeks prior, led to a rebound in approval for the Democrats under President Kennedy." Note that this sentence is completely unsourced. It is also IMO wrong. The Democrats were widely expected to lose some House seats, but not nearly enough to lose control of the House; and the Gallup poll did not show any appreciable improvement in the Democrats' standing after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I would argue that in fact the CMC had much less influence on the election results than is commonly assumed. My source for this argument is Thomas G. Paterson and William J. Brophy, "October Missiles and November Elections: The Cuban Missile Crisis and American Politics, 1962," Journal of American History, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages 87–119, which can be obtained as a .pdf from https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/73/1/87/782101
Some important points from the Paterson-Brophy article (incidentally, all quotes in this post are from that article, unless otherwise stated):
(1) It was never actually feared by the Democrats--or privately anticipated by the Republicans, whatever they might say in public--that the GOP would gain the 44 House seats necessary to win control. "In 1962 Republican leaders privately projected gains of 10 to 20 House seats for their party; publicly they expressed the hope of electing the additional 44 members needed to become the majority in the House.1 "History is so much against us," President Kennedy lamented at a press conference. The historian and presidential assistant Schlesinger urged Kennedy to distance himself from the elections so as to avoid being personally blamed for the expected defeats. With his legislative program under attack and fearing the loss of 15 to 20 House seats, the president decided instead to campaign actively. .."
(2) There actually were good reasons, long before the CMC (as I shall call the Cuban Missile Crisis here) to believe that the Democrats would do far better in 1962 than a party controlling the White House usually does in a midterm election. 1960 was not a year like 1912 or 1920 or 1952 or 1980 when a party easily wins the White House and gains a substantial number of seats in the House. Rather it was a year when the Democrats not only won the White House very narrowly but actually lost seats in the House; thus the most vulnerable of the Democrats elected in the Democratic "wave" of 1958 had already been defeated.
"Month after month and analysis after analysis, it became evident to the White House that 1962 promised to be an unusual political year: The Democrats were going to do well. The nature of the Kennedy victory in 1960, for example, suggested that midterm election tradition was likely to be broken. In 1960, for the first time in the twentieth century, the party that regained the presidency after being out of the White House failed to increase its congressional representation. Kennedy ran further behind the congressional candidates of his ticket than any other president elected since the beginning of the two-party system. As a rule he did not help Democratic candidates. Democratic Rep. John Blatnik of Minnesota believed that in his state the congressional candidates actually helped Kennedy more than he helped them. On a national basis in 1960, Democratic House candidates ran five percentage points ahead of Kennedy. Normally the successful presidential candidate attracts the votes of both party loyalists and independents and carries into office marginal nominees of his own party. Then, in the midterm contests, the marginal candidates must run without the benefit of the presidential coattails, and many lose. In 1960, however, Kennedy did not help to elect such vulnerable representatives. Thus the type of person most likely to be defeated by Republicans in 1962 was not holding office. From that perspective the probable outcome of the midterm elections was a new Congress that would resemble the old one."
"American voting behavior, especially that of the independent voter, also suggested that the Democrats would score gains in 1962. One-fifth of the electorate that year considered itself independent of party affiliation. Independents of that time were less prone to vote in off-year elections than were people who identified themselves as Republicans or Democrats. One analyst for the Democratic National Committee read this to mean that the Democratic party, as the more popular party by a four-to-three margin in registrations, would actually pick up seats in both houses. And, he advised, given the fading of the religious issue, Democratic gains would be made among voters who had cast ballots against Kennedy in 1960 because he was a Roman Catholic."
"Polling data also revealed the improbability of a Republican victory in 1962. Throughout the year George H. Gallup's organization measured party preference. Polling results indicated a slight slippage for the Democrats but revealed no discernable trend toward the Republican party, even during the critical months of September and October (see table 1). The polls released by Gallup on October 24 and November 5 were particularly telling. The interviews for the October 24 release were conducted between October 1 and 7; polling data for the November 5 release were obtained between October 29 and November 2. Thus Gallup completed one set of interviews after Cuba had become a serious campaign issue but before the missile crisis and another set after both Kennedy's public confrontation with the Soviets and the Soviet decision to remove the missiles. No appreciable difference in results existed between the polls. Gallup also asked Americans which political party they thought "could do a better job of handling" the country's problems. On that question, too, the Democrats consistently outscored the Republicans.."
Here are the Gallup "generic congressional" results for 1962:
Yes, the Democrats did slip a bit between March and July--but they still had a substantial majority, and there was no further decline. The CMC did send JFK's job approval ratings soaring from 61 to 74 percent, as one source that seeks to emphasize the impact of the CMC on the election points out. http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/frc2010093001/ But (a) 61% isn't that bad! (b) You can't accept Gallup as Gospel when it comes to their job approval rating polls and ignore them when their generic-congressional polls show little net impact of the CMC on the congressional race. Actually, there are plausible reasons why both polls could be accurate. For example, many southern Democrats might have disapproved of JFK before the CMC because of his stance on civil rights--yet may still have planned to vote for their conservative Democratic congressman. After the CMC, such voters might temporarily have expressed greater approval of JFK--but it would make no difference in their congressional vote, since they had planned to vote Democratic anyway. (Indeed, in many southern districts, the GOP did not field any candidates or at least any serious ones.)
(3) There are plenty of reasons to explain the limited nature of the Democrats' losses without reference to the CMC. Most incumbents were re-elected--as one might expect in a year of prosperity and (shaky) peace,when the previous election (1960) had not given either party an artificially large majority in the House.
"Because so many incumbents were victorious, can the defeat of those Republican incumbents who lost be explained by Kennedy's handling of the missile crisis? Did the election results stem from voter reaction to the crisis? Domestic-policy issues, local political peculiarities, the nature of the 1960 election, the strength of the Democratic party in voter registration, reapportionment, and the ancient practice of gerrymandering-not the Cuban missile crisis-best explain the Republican party's failure to make significant gains in the House. In the nation as a whole, 206 representatives had to run in new or substantially altered districts. Reapportionment had allocated ten additional congressional districts to the West, and the Democrats won all but one of those new districts. Eight of the new districts were in California; Democrats won seven of them in large part because of a radical gerrymander." (The gerrymander in question defeated three incumbent California House Republicans, including the House's only two members of the John Birch Society.)
"Certainly the missile crisis affected voters in California and elsewhere in the West, but the intrusion of the crisis into the campaign season may not necessarily have helped Democrats. In the West both successful Republicans and successful Democrats had favored a strong stand against Cuba. In California's Eleventh District, for example, Democratic candidate William J. Keller lost badly to Rep. J. Arthur Younger. When he analyzed the outcome, Keller concluded that voters on the whole preferred incumbents, regardless of party. He also thought insufficient funds had hindered his campaign. But he fingered the Cuban missile crisis as a culprit in two ways. First, the briefing the administration gave to incumbents such as Younger "hurt," because it marked them as leaders. Second, the crisis caused the president to cancel his campaign visit to the Golden State. "We felt the campaign was hitting its stride until Cuba, then fell off and never recovered." On the other hand, the missile crisis may have set back Nixon's California gubernatorial candidacy. Elsewhere in the West, the Cuban crisis does not appear to have decided election results."
(On the subject of Nixon: The Field Poll of September 27, 1962 showed Brown leading Nixon 48-42 among registered voters: http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/pubs/CalPolls/364.pdf Then the October 19 poll http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/pubs/CalPolls/373.pdf taken after a debate which seems to have been a net plus for Nixon, showed Brown's lead down to 46-43 among registered voters, with a tie among those considered most likely to vote. The final poll, taken five days before the election http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/pubs/CalPolls/373.pdf showed Brown with a 48-41 lead over Nixon among registered voters and 48-44 among those most likely to vote. So it is plausible to say that the CMC destroyed Nixon's momentum. But it is also arguable that the October 19 poll simply represented a temporary post-debate blip for Nixon that would have disappeared anyway. Moreover, none of the Field polls in the autumn, even that of October 19, ever showed Nixon actually leading, even among "likely voters." In any event, Brown's final margin of victory was over five points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_gubernatorial_election,_1962 Maybe without the CMC it would have been narrower, but it is hard for me to see the crisis changing the vote by that much.)
One should note that California was not the only state with a gerrymander. In New York, Governor Rockefeller and the Republican-controlled legislature enacted a redistricting plan every bit as favorable to the Republicans as the California redistricting was to the Democrats. Unlike the California plan, it didn't work as expected. For example, the GOP tried to squeeze almost every Republican-leaning part of Brooklyn into freshman Democratic Congressman Hugh Carey's district, but Carey managed to pull out a very narrow victory anyway. https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=67330 Did the CMC save Carey? That's plausible--but one should remember that he held the district in 1964 and even in the more Republican year of 1966 as well. Clearly he was an attractive candidate for some Brooklyn voters who might vote Republican in other races.
(4) What about the Senate? Here again one can argue that factors other than the CMC were responsible. Incumbent Republicans like Capehart and Wiley had just been along too long and were vulnerable to younger challengers. Gaylord Nelson was later to say that he thought the CMC actualy helped Wiley:
"Age, asperity, and the issue of Medicare best explain the defeat of the dean of Republican senators, Wiley of Wisconsin. Wiley was seventy-eight years old and seeking a fifth term. His Democratic challenger, Gov. Gaylord A. Nelson, who was forty-six, made age an issue. Throughout the campaign Wiley displayed a grumpyexplosiveness and carelessness. Medicare and drug control, he said, were "pipsqueak issues." In early October a reporter asked him whether he had changed his opposition to Medicare. The senator shot back: "Keep your damn nose out of my business and I'll keep my nose out of yours." When the reporter rose later to ask another question, Wiley boomed: "Keep your mouth shut." About two weeks later Wiley told reporters before a press conference that he wanted questions "without any n****r in the woodpile," and he shouted down still another reporter. Wiley apologized, but his style antagonized many. The Burlington Standard Press, a conservative Republican newspaper, abandoned Wiley and endorsed Nelson.65 Without doubt Nelson's greatest asset was his opponent.
"Before the missile crisis Nelson believed he had Wiley "on the run," in part because Congress had recessed and Wiley had come home to display his offensive style. But then the Cuban missile crisis intruded. Nelson feared it set back his campaign. First, the president canceled a scheduled trip to Wisconsin. Second, as Nelson noted at the time, "it has removed Wiley from the state just when his true character was becoming apparent to the voters." And, third, because Wiley was called to Washington to meet with Kennedy on October 22, the crisis "portrayed him as one of sixteen Congressional leaders upon whom the President counts." One of Nelson's close associates remarked: "This [Cuba] was no break for us." Nelson quickly applauded the quarantine and tried to contrast the president's (and Nelson's) "statesmanship" with Wiley's "slogans without meaning." But Wiley claimed headlines, making much of his supposed importance during the crisis. One press release read: "Recalled to Washington by the President for consultation on the Cuban situation, Senator Wiley also has been conferring with top defense and intelligence officials." The Cuban missile crisis may have reinvigorated Wiley's campaign, but Democrat Nelson won nonetheless with 52.6 percent of the vote.66 The president's handling of the crisis, then, actually boosted a Republican - just as Kennedy had feared might happen."
Likewise in Indiana it can be argued the CMC actually helped Capehart:
"The most conspicuous incumbent to lose in 1962 was Republican Senator Capehart. He, more than anyone else seeking reelection, had spoken to the Cuban issue. The president campaigned in the Hoosier State for the Democratic candidate Birch E. Bayh,]r., a state representative. The White House also asked Louis Harris to conduct an intensive survey of Indiana voters. Harris discovered that Capehart's lead over Bayh was modest in the early stages of the campaign, despite the fact that Capehart was a three-term incumbent with name recognition. Harris learned too that Capehart evoked little enthusiasm among the electorate. Many voters found Capehart weak and indecisive, "a wind-bag, and playing politics too much." Capehart, moreover, had a negative rating on taxes, Medicare, unemployment, and inflation. Some complained about the senator's "intemperate views on going to war withCuba," but in the Harris poll only 1 percent of his constituents saw Cuba as the paramount issue of the campaign even though Capehart tried to make it such. Bayh won just 50.3 percent of the vote. It does not appear that voters turned Capehart out because of his stand on Cuba or because of the president's stewardship of the crisis, but because Capehart failed to establish a positive image on the issues and as a personality against a young, energetic candidate who ran a high-exposure campaign. The Cuban missile crisis may have actually helped Capehart because it permitted him to use the "I was right all along" refrain."
What about the other Senate races? In NH, I doubt very much that Cuba was responsible for Thomas McIntyre's victory. What was more important was that the state GOP was bitterly dvided--Perkins Bass had won a contentious primary against "interim Senator Maurice J. Murphy Jr., Doloris Bridges [Senator Styles Bridges' widow] and Congressman Chester Merrow" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perkins_Bass In South Dakota, the CMC probably helped George McGovern in the extremely close race there--but incumbent Joseph H. Bottum's lead in the polls had already been narrowing earlier. "In South Carolina local Democrats believed that the missile crisis augmented Sen. Olin D. Johnston's vote count by diverting attention from the Mississippi controversy. As Johnston told the president by telephone in the midst of the missile crisis, "Your stand . . . meant a lot to our party down there - brought the people together." Johnston's drawing of 57.2 percent of the vote, however, suggests that he had the election well in hand before the Cuban crisis."
Paterson and Brophy conclude:
"A familiar theory holds that voters tend not to favor newcomers in times of crisis. To the extent that this is true, the Cuban missile crisis benefited Senate and House incumbents-and 1962 was a good year for incumbents. As Republican Rep. Thomas B. Curtis of Missouri later explained, the missile showdown "gave all the incumbents running for reelection a great build-up. We were important .... This is what saved the Democrat controlled Congress, the great plus given to incumbents. Of course, Republican incumbents got the same benefit, but we were in the minority and we stayed in the minority."68 But the proposition that voters prefer not to change leaders in moments of crisis does not adequately explain the complexity of the 1962 election. Many of the losers of both parties were Washington veterans (Judd, Capehart, Wiley, Yates, Pfost, Rousselot, Hiestand, McDonough, and Carroll, among others). And some of the winners were newcomers to national office (Bayh, McIntyre, Nelson, and Simpson, among others). In some cases, moreover, such as in North Carolina and Kansas, congressional reapportionment had paired incumbents against one another in new districts, ensuring the defeat of some." [Here one might add that there is simply no reason to believe that most Democratic incumbents were in trouble before the CMC. The economy was fairly strong, JFK was more popular than he had been in 1960 when the most vulnerable Democrats had already been defeated, etc. And as noted, Gallup showed a Democratic edge all through the campaign--DT]
"The effects of the Cuban missile crisis seem indiscriminate. The crisis helped some Democrats and hurt some Democrats; it buoyed some Republicans and weakened some Republicans. In many instances Cuba was not even a conspicuous campaign issue. The historian cannot identify one election in 1962 decided by voter reaction to the missile crisis - not a single outcome where the Cuban issue made the difference between victory and defeat. The results of the House and the Senate races, in other words, are best explained by the mix of other factors discussed in this article: personalities and their public images; /local politics; domestic issues; reapportionment and gerrymandering; superior Democratic party registration; and the nature of the 1960 election."
I would not go quite as far as Paterson and Brophy in minimizing the influence of the CMC. It may have been decisive in some very close races, including those involving Democrats who would be important in the party in the future, like Hugh Carey and George McGovern. It may also have played a role in saving Lister Hill's Senate seat in Alabama. But given Pat Brown's substantial margin of victory (over five points) I doubt that it was responsible for Nixon's loss of California. And I think that the general outcome of the election--Democrats losing only a few seats in the House and holding their own or even scoring a net gain in the Senate--would have been the same without the CMC. In any event, any statement that the Republicans were expected to or would have won control of the House seems to me just plain wrong. (I did some calculations based on https://en.wikipedia.org/.../United_States_House_of... The Democrats won 38 seats by 10.0 points or less. Even if one makes the extremely implausible assumption that without the CMC they would have lost every one of those seats, they would still control the House 218-216!)
An extreme example of the "Cuban Missile Crisis saved the Democrats" thesis may be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1962: "House Democrats were expected to lose their majority, but the resolution over the Cuban Missile Crisis just a few weeks prior, led to a rebound in approval for the Democrats under President Kennedy." Note that this sentence is completely unsourced. It is also IMO wrong. The Democrats were widely expected to lose some House seats, but not nearly enough to lose control of the House; and the Gallup poll did not show any appreciable improvement in the Democrats' standing after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I would argue that in fact the CMC had much less influence on the election results than is commonly assumed. My source for this argument is Thomas G. Paterson and William J. Brophy, "October Missiles and November Elections: The Cuban Missile Crisis and American Politics, 1962," Journal of American History, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1986, Pages 87–119, which can be obtained as a .pdf from https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/73/1/87/782101
Some important points from the Paterson-Brophy article (incidentally, all quotes in this post are from that article, unless otherwise stated):
(1) It was never actually feared by the Democrats--or privately anticipated by the Republicans, whatever they might say in public--that the GOP would gain the 44 House seats necessary to win control. "In 1962 Republican leaders privately projected gains of 10 to 20 House seats for their party; publicly they expressed the hope of electing the additional 44 members needed to become the majority in the House.1 "History is so much against us," President Kennedy lamented at a press conference. The historian and presidential assistant Schlesinger urged Kennedy to distance himself from the elections so as to avoid being personally blamed for the expected defeats. With his legislative program under attack and fearing the loss of 15 to 20 House seats, the president decided instead to campaign actively. .."
(2) There actually were good reasons, long before the CMC (as I shall call the Cuban Missile Crisis here) to believe that the Democrats would do far better in 1962 than a party controlling the White House usually does in a midterm election. 1960 was not a year like 1912 or 1920 or 1952 or 1980 when a party easily wins the White House and gains a substantial number of seats in the House. Rather it was a year when the Democrats not only won the White House very narrowly but actually lost seats in the House; thus the most vulnerable of the Democrats elected in the Democratic "wave" of 1958 had already been defeated.
"Month after month and analysis after analysis, it became evident to the White House that 1962 promised to be an unusual political year: The Democrats were going to do well. The nature of the Kennedy victory in 1960, for example, suggested that midterm election tradition was likely to be broken. In 1960, for the first time in the twentieth century, the party that regained the presidency after being out of the White House failed to increase its congressional representation. Kennedy ran further behind the congressional candidates of his ticket than any other president elected since the beginning of the two-party system. As a rule he did not help Democratic candidates. Democratic Rep. John Blatnik of Minnesota believed that in his state the congressional candidates actually helped Kennedy more than he helped them. On a national basis in 1960, Democratic House candidates ran five percentage points ahead of Kennedy. Normally the successful presidential candidate attracts the votes of both party loyalists and independents and carries into office marginal nominees of his own party. Then, in the midterm contests, the marginal candidates must run without the benefit of the presidential coattails, and many lose. In 1960, however, Kennedy did not help to elect such vulnerable representatives. Thus the type of person most likely to be defeated by Republicans in 1962 was not holding office. From that perspective the probable outcome of the midterm elections was a new Congress that would resemble the old one."
"American voting behavior, especially that of the independent voter, also suggested that the Democrats would score gains in 1962. One-fifth of the electorate that year considered itself independent of party affiliation. Independents of that time were less prone to vote in off-year elections than were people who identified themselves as Republicans or Democrats. One analyst for the Democratic National Committee read this to mean that the Democratic party, as the more popular party by a four-to-three margin in registrations, would actually pick up seats in both houses. And, he advised, given the fading of the religious issue, Democratic gains would be made among voters who had cast ballots against Kennedy in 1960 because he was a Roman Catholic."
"Polling data also revealed the improbability of a Republican victory in 1962. Throughout the year George H. Gallup's organization measured party preference. Polling results indicated a slight slippage for the Democrats but revealed no discernable trend toward the Republican party, even during the critical months of September and October (see table 1). The polls released by Gallup on October 24 and November 5 were particularly telling. The interviews for the October 24 release were conducted between October 1 and 7; polling data for the November 5 release were obtained between October 29 and November 2. Thus Gallup completed one set of interviews after Cuba had become a serious campaign issue but before the missile crisis and another set after both Kennedy's public confrontation with the Soviets and the Soviet decision to remove the missiles. No appreciable difference in results existed between the polls. Gallup also asked Americans which political party they thought "could do a better job of handling" the country's problems. On that question, too, the Democrats consistently outscored the Republicans.."
Here are the Gallup "generic congressional" results for 1962:
Yes, the Democrats did slip a bit between March and July--but they still had a substantial majority, and there was no further decline. The CMC did send JFK's job approval ratings soaring from 61 to 74 percent, as one source that seeks to emphasize the impact of the CMC on the election points out. http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/frc2010093001/ But (a) 61% isn't that bad! (b) You can't accept Gallup as Gospel when it comes to their job approval rating polls and ignore them when their generic-congressional polls show little net impact of the CMC on the congressional race. Actually, there are plausible reasons why both polls could be accurate. For example, many southern Democrats might have disapproved of JFK before the CMC because of his stance on civil rights--yet may still have planned to vote for their conservative Democratic congressman. After the CMC, such voters might temporarily have expressed greater approval of JFK--but it would make no difference in their congressional vote, since they had planned to vote Democratic anyway. (Indeed, in many southern districts, the GOP did not field any candidates or at least any serious ones.)
(3) There are plenty of reasons to explain the limited nature of the Democrats' losses without reference to the CMC. Most incumbents were re-elected--as one might expect in a year of prosperity and (shaky) peace,when the previous election (1960) had not given either party an artificially large majority in the House.
"Because so many incumbents were victorious, can the defeat of those Republican incumbents who lost be explained by Kennedy's handling of the missile crisis? Did the election results stem from voter reaction to the crisis? Domestic-policy issues, local political peculiarities, the nature of the 1960 election, the strength of the Democratic party in voter registration, reapportionment, and the ancient practice of gerrymandering-not the Cuban missile crisis-best explain the Republican party's failure to make significant gains in the House. In the nation as a whole, 206 representatives had to run in new or substantially altered districts. Reapportionment had allocated ten additional congressional districts to the West, and the Democrats won all but one of those new districts. Eight of the new districts were in California; Democrats won seven of them in large part because of a radical gerrymander." (The gerrymander in question defeated three incumbent California House Republicans, including the House's only two members of the John Birch Society.)
"Certainly the missile crisis affected voters in California and elsewhere in the West, but the intrusion of the crisis into the campaign season may not necessarily have helped Democrats. In the West both successful Republicans and successful Democrats had favored a strong stand against Cuba. In California's Eleventh District, for example, Democratic candidate William J. Keller lost badly to Rep. J. Arthur Younger. When he analyzed the outcome, Keller concluded that voters on the whole preferred incumbents, regardless of party. He also thought insufficient funds had hindered his campaign. But he fingered the Cuban missile crisis as a culprit in two ways. First, the briefing the administration gave to incumbents such as Younger "hurt," because it marked them as leaders. Second, the crisis caused the president to cancel his campaign visit to the Golden State. "We felt the campaign was hitting its stride until Cuba, then fell off and never recovered." On the other hand, the missile crisis may have set back Nixon's California gubernatorial candidacy. Elsewhere in the West, the Cuban crisis does not appear to have decided election results."
(On the subject of Nixon: The Field Poll of September 27, 1962 showed Brown leading Nixon 48-42 among registered voters: http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/pubs/CalPolls/364.pdf Then the October 19 poll http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/pubs/CalPolls/373.pdf taken after a debate which seems to have been a net plus for Nixon, showed Brown's lead down to 46-43 among registered voters, with a tie among those considered most likely to vote. The final poll, taken five days before the election http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/pubs/CalPolls/373.pdf showed Brown with a 48-41 lead over Nixon among registered voters and 48-44 among those most likely to vote. So it is plausible to say that the CMC destroyed Nixon's momentum. But it is also arguable that the October 19 poll simply represented a temporary post-debate blip for Nixon that would have disappeared anyway. Moreover, none of the Field polls in the autumn, even that of October 19, ever showed Nixon actually leading, even among "likely voters." In any event, Brown's final margin of victory was over five points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_gubernatorial_election,_1962 Maybe without the CMC it would have been narrower, but it is hard for me to see the crisis changing the vote by that much.)
One should note that California was not the only state with a gerrymander. In New York, Governor Rockefeller and the Republican-controlled legislature enacted a redistricting plan every bit as favorable to the Republicans as the California redistricting was to the Democrats. Unlike the California plan, it didn't work as expected. For example, the GOP tried to squeeze almost every Republican-leaning part of Brooklyn into freshman Democratic Congressman Hugh Carey's district, but Carey managed to pull out a very narrow victory anyway. https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=67330 Did the CMC save Carey? That's plausible--but one should remember that he held the district in 1964 and even in the more Republican year of 1966 as well. Clearly he was an attractive candidate for some Brooklyn voters who might vote Republican in other races.
(4) What about the Senate? Here again one can argue that factors other than the CMC were responsible. Incumbent Republicans like Capehart and Wiley had just been along too long and were vulnerable to younger challengers. Gaylord Nelson was later to say that he thought the CMC actualy helped Wiley:
"Age, asperity, and the issue of Medicare best explain the defeat of the dean of Republican senators, Wiley of Wisconsin. Wiley was seventy-eight years old and seeking a fifth term. His Democratic challenger, Gov. Gaylord A. Nelson, who was forty-six, made age an issue. Throughout the campaign Wiley displayed a grumpyexplosiveness and carelessness. Medicare and drug control, he said, were "pipsqueak issues." In early October a reporter asked him whether he had changed his opposition to Medicare. The senator shot back: "Keep your damn nose out of my business and I'll keep my nose out of yours." When the reporter rose later to ask another question, Wiley boomed: "Keep your mouth shut." About two weeks later Wiley told reporters before a press conference that he wanted questions "without any n****r in the woodpile," and he shouted down still another reporter. Wiley apologized, but his style antagonized many. The Burlington Standard Press, a conservative Republican newspaper, abandoned Wiley and endorsed Nelson.65 Without doubt Nelson's greatest asset was his opponent.
"Before the missile crisis Nelson believed he had Wiley "on the run," in part because Congress had recessed and Wiley had come home to display his offensive style. But then the Cuban missile crisis intruded. Nelson feared it set back his campaign. First, the president canceled a scheduled trip to Wisconsin. Second, as Nelson noted at the time, "it has removed Wiley from the state just when his true character was becoming apparent to the voters." And, third, because Wiley was called to Washington to meet with Kennedy on October 22, the crisis "portrayed him as one of sixteen Congressional leaders upon whom the President counts." One of Nelson's close associates remarked: "This [Cuba] was no break for us." Nelson quickly applauded the quarantine and tried to contrast the president's (and Nelson's) "statesmanship" with Wiley's "slogans without meaning." But Wiley claimed headlines, making much of his supposed importance during the crisis. One press release read: "Recalled to Washington by the President for consultation on the Cuban situation, Senator Wiley also has been conferring with top defense and intelligence officials." The Cuban missile crisis may have reinvigorated Wiley's campaign, but Democrat Nelson won nonetheless with 52.6 percent of the vote.66 The president's handling of the crisis, then, actually boosted a Republican - just as Kennedy had feared might happen."
Likewise in Indiana it can be argued the CMC actually helped Capehart:
"The most conspicuous incumbent to lose in 1962 was Republican Senator Capehart. He, more than anyone else seeking reelection, had spoken to the Cuban issue. The president campaigned in the Hoosier State for the Democratic candidate Birch E. Bayh,]r., a state representative. The White House also asked Louis Harris to conduct an intensive survey of Indiana voters. Harris discovered that Capehart's lead over Bayh was modest in the early stages of the campaign, despite the fact that Capehart was a three-term incumbent with name recognition. Harris learned too that Capehart evoked little enthusiasm among the electorate. Many voters found Capehart weak and indecisive, "a wind-bag, and playing politics too much." Capehart, moreover, had a negative rating on taxes, Medicare, unemployment, and inflation. Some complained about the senator's "intemperate views on going to war withCuba," but in the Harris poll only 1 percent of his constituents saw Cuba as the paramount issue of the campaign even though Capehart tried to make it such. Bayh won just 50.3 percent of the vote. It does not appear that voters turned Capehart out because of his stand on Cuba or because of the president's stewardship of the crisis, but because Capehart failed to establish a positive image on the issues and as a personality against a young, energetic candidate who ran a high-exposure campaign. The Cuban missile crisis may have actually helped Capehart because it permitted him to use the "I was right all along" refrain."
What about the other Senate races? In NH, I doubt very much that Cuba was responsible for Thomas McIntyre's victory. What was more important was that the state GOP was bitterly dvided--Perkins Bass had won a contentious primary against "interim Senator Maurice J. Murphy Jr., Doloris Bridges [Senator Styles Bridges' widow] and Congressman Chester Merrow" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perkins_Bass In South Dakota, the CMC probably helped George McGovern in the extremely close race there--but incumbent Joseph H. Bottum's lead in the polls had already been narrowing earlier. "In South Carolina local Democrats believed that the missile crisis augmented Sen. Olin D. Johnston's vote count by diverting attention from the Mississippi controversy. As Johnston told the president by telephone in the midst of the missile crisis, "Your stand . . . meant a lot to our party down there - brought the people together." Johnston's drawing of 57.2 percent of the vote, however, suggests that he had the election well in hand before the Cuban crisis."
Paterson and Brophy conclude:
"A familiar theory holds that voters tend not to favor newcomers in times of crisis. To the extent that this is true, the Cuban missile crisis benefited Senate and House incumbents-and 1962 was a good year for incumbents. As Republican Rep. Thomas B. Curtis of Missouri later explained, the missile showdown "gave all the incumbents running for reelection a great build-up. We were important .... This is what saved the Democrat controlled Congress, the great plus given to incumbents. Of course, Republican incumbents got the same benefit, but we were in the minority and we stayed in the minority."68 But the proposition that voters prefer not to change leaders in moments of crisis does not adequately explain the complexity of the 1962 election. Many of the losers of both parties were Washington veterans (Judd, Capehart, Wiley, Yates, Pfost, Rousselot, Hiestand, McDonough, and Carroll, among others). And some of the winners were newcomers to national office (Bayh, McIntyre, Nelson, and Simpson, among others). In some cases, moreover, such as in North Carolina and Kansas, congressional reapportionment had paired incumbents against one another in new districts, ensuring the defeat of some." [Here one might add that there is simply no reason to believe that most Democratic incumbents were in trouble before the CMC. The economy was fairly strong, JFK was more popular than he had been in 1960 when the most vulnerable Democrats had already been defeated, etc. And as noted, Gallup showed a Democratic edge all through the campaign--DT]
"The effects of the Cuban missile crisis seem indiscriminate. The crisis helped some Democrats and hurt some Democrats; it buoyed some Republicans and weakened some Republicans. In many instances Cuba was not even a conspicuous campaign issue. The historian cannot identify one election in 1962 decided by voter reaction to the missile crisis - not a single outcome where the Cuban issue made the difference between victory and defeat. The results of the House and the Senate races, in other words, are best explained by the mix of other factors discussed in this article: personalities and their public images; /local politics; domestic issues; reapportionment and gerrymandering; superior Democratic party registration; and the nature of the 1960 election."
I would not go quite as far as Paterson and Brophy in minimizing the influence of the CMC. It may have been decisive in some very close races, including those involving Democrats who would be important in the party in the future, like Hugh Carey and George McGovern. It may also have played a role in saving Lister Hill's Senate seat in Alabama. But given Pat Brown's substantial margin of victory (over five points) I doubt that it was responsible for Nixon's loss of California. And I think that the general outcome of the election--Democrats losing only a few seats in the House and holding their own or even scoring a net gain in the Senate--would have been the same without the CMC. In any event, any statement that the Republicans were expected to or would have won control of the House seems to me just plain wrong. (I did some calculations based on https://en.wikipedia.org/.../United_States_House_of... The Democrats won 38 seats by 10.0 points or less. Even if one makes the extremely implausible assumption that without the CMC they would have lost every one of those seats, they would still control the House 218-216!)
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