WI: Nixon instead of Kennedy?

Deleted member 96212

IRL, Nixon lost to Kennedy in a close presidential election, so what would be needed for Kennedy to lose to Nixon, and what would the broader ramifications be?
 
Elections and why they are won/lost aren't my field but from what I understand part of what helped Kennedy in the debates was that they were televised and Nixon looked rather uncomfortable during the debate around JFK (Unless of course that isn't the case at all and I remember some weird version of that election).

Edit: I forgot my point, make the debates not televised.
 
you could still have the debates televised. Just have Nixon not be in the hospital from an infected leg injury in the weeks prior. Also have him prepare for that debate instead of some last minute campaigning. 1960 was so close, a sneeze in either direction could shift the scales.
 
Perhaps Kennedy picks someone different as his running mate and causes Nixon to win Texas and more of the upper south. Combine that with a change in the debates.
If Nixon becomes President in 1960, as he did in my TL New Deal Coalition Retained, it will be him that is remembered as the Civil Rights President.
 
Perhaps Kennedy picks someone different as his running mate and causes Nixon to win Texas and more of the upper south. Combine that with a change in the debates.
If Nixon becomes President in 1960, as he did in my TL New Deal Coalition Retained, it will be him that is remembered as the Civil Rights President.

he doesn't even need Texas, just throw Illinois (incredibly close) and one other of the amazingly close states he had fine chances at winning and he's got it in the bag. An earlier and better involvement by Eisenhower could also help significantly.

You could also run the way of having Nixon be the one who calls MLK and gets him released (he attempted it) or have Kennedy not make the call at all that he did OTL (he almost didn't)
 
It is a myth that Kennedy won the debate among people who watched it on TV. The polls all agree, whether it was listened to on radio or watched on tv- Nixon won. The problem is- people dont make up their decision based on who won a debate. Kennedy had youth and good looks, which didnt help him win the debate, but it also allowed him to negate that people thought Nixon did better.
 
It is a myth that Kennedy won the debate among people who watched it on TV. The polls all agree, whether it was listened to on radio or watched on tv- Nixon won. The problem is- people dont make up their decision based on who won a debate. Kennedy had youth and good looks, which didnt help him win the debate, but it also allowed him to negate that people thought Nixon did better.

Uh, no, it's more complex than that:

"It turns out that aside from a few anecdotal accounts from journalists, only one true survey attempted to gauge reactions to the debate among both radio and television audiences. It involved a few questions asked on a larger omnibus telephone survey conducted by Sindlinger and Company, and the cross-tabulation by audience (television and radio) was published only once, in the November 7, 1960 issue of Broadcasting (from Kraus, 1996, p. 80):

'Kennedy supporters may be grateful that television was invented before the "Great Debates" took place. The Sindlinger research showed that Mr. Kennedy was routed by Mr. Nixon on radio.

'In answer to the question who won the debates, 48.7% of the radio audience named Mr. Nixon and only 21% picked Mr. Kennedy. Among those who watched the debates on tv, 30.2% named Mr. Kennedy the winner and 28.6% picked Mr. Nixon.

'According to the Sindlinger projections, the total television audience was about 4 - ½ times the radio audience - 270 millions viewers of 5v to 61.4 million listeners to radio.

"That result, however, has a few problems, the most important of which is the relatively small size and unrepresentative nature of the radio audience. It amounted to must 282 responses from Sindlinger's sample of 2138 respondents, but the pollster apparently misplaced the original data, because no information survived regarding the partisanship or vote preference of the radio or television subgroups. That omission is critical because, as Steven Chafee, a professor of communications at the University of California Santa Barbara has observed (2000, p. 334):

"By 1960, those who could listen to debates only on radio were far from a random lot. Situated for the most part in remote rural areas, they were overwhelmingly Protestants and skeptical of Kennedy as a Roman Catholic candidate.

"University of Minnesota Political Scientist James N. Druckman, sums up (p. 563):

'Put another way, relative to television viewers, radio listeners may have been predisposed to favor Nixon over Kennedy. This lack of reliable causal evidence means that a prime example of the power of television images may be nothing more than "telemythology" (Schudson, 1995, 116). '

"Or is it? After all, much of the power of this debate anecdote is that most observers and commentators thought Nixon lost the debate to Kennedy on the basis of his appearance. It certainly seems plausible that had the same debate occurred on radio, Nixon may have fared better.

"Druckman took the matter one step further. In the article quoted above, he describes an intriguing experiment conducted about five years ago. He recruited 171 respondents - mostly students - who demonstrated little or no knowledge of the Kennedy-Nixon debates. He then randomly divided the subjects into two groups. Half watched a video tape of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate and the other half listed to just the audio. All later answered questions about Nixon and Kennedy, yielding the results Druckman had expected (pp. 569-570):

'Television images matter - they prime people to rely more on personality perceptions when evaluating candidates, which in turn, can affect overall evaluations. Images also enhance political learning, at least among nonsophisticates. The experiment provides evidence that Kennedy may have done better on television because of his superior image.

"So there we have it. A great example of how not to interpret a post-debate survey, and a clever experiment by a social scientist that provides a bit of evidence to support the underlying truth beneath the well established 'telemyth.'"

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/did_nixon_win_with_radio_liste.html
 
My preferred POD for having Nixon win is keep Kennedy from calling Martin Luther King's wife, and thus keeping MLK Sr. from endorsing Kennedy. Nixon narrowly wins the black vote, and with it the presidency.
 
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