WI: Nixon Uses the Southern Strategy in 1960?

I don't recall Nixon using this strategy until he tried again in 1968. How might the election in 1960 have gone if Nixon employed the Southern Strategy as aggressively as he did in 1968?
 
I don't think there was enough a schism between Northern and Southern Democrats at that point for it to be a successful tactic. I know there was "Massive Resistance" to Brown vs Board of Education by that point, but I don't think it had matured to the point in 1960 for it to drive White Southern Democrats away from the national party to a significant degree.
 

Wallet

Banned
Nixon was actually more supported civil rights more publicly then Kennedy in 1960. Kennedy didn't mention civil rights until he got the nomination and kept it low key until very late. Only after calling and getting MLK out of jail did he come out stronger in support. The south was still considered solid democratic territory and the democratic ticket didn't want to lose any states in the super close election.

Nixon was very public on his support of civil rights and his support for the 1957 civil rights bill. It's sad to se how far he fell in his later years before his two losses turned him to the dark side.
 
I don't think there was enough a schism between Northern and Southern Democrats at that point for it to be a successful tactic. I know there was "Massive Resistance" to Brown vs Board of Education by that point, but I don't think it had matured to the point in 1960 for it to drive White Southern Democrats away from the national party to a significant degree.

The previous election had Eisenhower win 5 of the 11 former Confederate states. If anything, I’ve been starting to wonder if the 60’s aren’t just really overrated. The South had started voting Republican decades earlier, at least in part.

That said, Nixon would have to repudiate his direct superior’s Civil Rights record, probably a hard sell.
 
As I have often pointed out, there were only three southern states Nixon lost *narrowly*--Texas, North Carolina, and South Carolina. If he carried all three of them, he would still have been short of an Electoral College majority. http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1960.txt

Nixon lost the election in the North, not the South. It was his narrow defeats in Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and the border state of Missouri that doomed him.

(Nixon did pay attention to southern whites in 1960 in OTL--there's a reason that he, unlike JFK, didn't call Coretta Scott King after her husband was arrested...)
 
The previous election had Eisenhower win 5 of the 11 former Confederate states. If anything, I’ve been starting to wonder if the 60’s aren’t just really overrated. The South had started voting Republican decades earlier, at least in part.

That said, Nixon would have to repudiate his direct superior’s Civil Rights record, probably a hard sell.

But I mean, doesn't he run the risk of burning Centrist NE Republicans (Dunno what West Coast Republicans were like at that the time) if he doubles down on a Cultural argument?
 
I don't recall Nixon using this strategy until he tried again in 1968. How might the election in 1960 have gone if Nixon employed the Southern Strategy as aggressively as he did in 1968?

IOTL JFK was worried over exactly this- Nixon invading his vulnerable southern flank-
& so a major reason he picked LBJ as his
Veep was that he could repel Nixon there.
This LBJ IOTL was able to do(JFK's margin
of victory in Georgia was larger than it was
in Massachusetts). Remember, LBJ was a
better campaigner than Nixon(in one Virginia
town he asked the voters "What has Richard
Nixon ever done for Culpepper?")& in 1960
IOTL he didn't have the Vietnam albatross
around his neck. So I think Nixon pursuing a
southern strategy would not have made a
difference UNLESS....

IOTL in 1960 late in the campaign Eisen-
hower-who until then had been silent-
made a # of speeches for Nixon. This helped
create a surge that almost carried Nixon to
victory. Republicans grumbled though that Ike waited too long & was not used properly
(why send him to solidly-JFK New York for
example?) What if Ike had spoken up earlier
& went to the South too?(Remember IOTL
Eisenhower, in 1952 & 1956, was the 1st
Republican candidate ever to twice carry
Southern States, thereby breaking up the
previously solidly Democratic South)I think
if this had been done, combined with Nixon's
different strategy, the 1960 election would
have been won by Nixon.
 
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In a number of southern states, Nixon actually did better in 1960 than Ike had in 1956. E.g., Georgia--33.3% R in 1956, 37.4% in 1960; Alabama--39.5% in 1956, 42.1% in 1960; Mississippi--24.5% in 1956, 24.7% in 1960; Tennessee--49.2% in 1956, 52.9% in 1960. IMO the reason for this was not civil rights but religion. In the border state of Oklahoma, where race was much less an issue than in the Deep South, Ike got 55.1% in 1956, Nixon 59.0% in 1960. http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1956.txt http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1960.txt
 
If Nixon tried something like that, he would perhaps win more of the South. However, he would certainly lose more of the Northern vote. This is an America before the cultural schism. Northerners "love Puerto Ricans and Negroes, just so long as they don't move next door", and this is during a period when the South looks absolutely terrible to the North. There's no way of weaseling it in as "law and order" with old New Dealers swallowing it because of militancy and strangeness of a youth which has not risen to political movement and power. The Northerner will look at Nixon cross eyed on why he sounds like an Alabaman sheriff. And it goes against Eisenhower's public positions and interventions regarding civil rights. It would alienate the moderates, and make him look worse than Goldwater. In short, it is too soon, and too soon to get New Dealers to vote for him despite themselves because they fear more than they care. "Reagan Democrats" are still just Democrats.
 
Nixon would have probably lost California if he tried an overt Southern Strategy as there was a strong core of support for Republicans by Blacks in California.
I can't think,of any other Northern or Midwest state that was close that had a large enough black vote to switch from Nixon to Kennedy.
 
Nixon would have probably lost California if he tried an overt Southern Strategy as there was a strong core of support for Republicans by Blacks in California.
I can't think,of any other Northern or Midwest state that was close that had a large enough black vote to switch from Nixon to Kennedy.

Maybe Alaska? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Alaska,_1960 Not many African Americans, there, but maybe some Natives (and of course some moderate whites) resent Nixon's stand.
 
I don't think there was enough a schism between Northern and Southern Democrats at that point for it to be a successful tactic. I know there was "Massive Resistance" to Brown vs Board of Education by that point, but I don't think it had matured to the point in 1960 for it to drive White Southern Democrats away from the national party to a significant degree.

Nixon was very public on his support of civil rights and his support for the 1957 civil rights bill. It's sad to se how far he fell in his later years before his two losses turned him to the dark side.

There were three major things that made the Southern Strategy work/happen:

-Civil rights laws/court judges, especially the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Brown vs. Board of Education, and Loving vs. Virginia
-Urban riots
-LBJ’s Great Society programs

All of that was necessary to fully drive the wedge between northern and southern democrats. The last two were important because they were the dog whistles that Nixon used in 1968 and 1972 and they gave southern whites something else to focus on, removing the necessity of opposing any of the major civil rights legislation/cases that had become mainstream consensus.

Trying to do that in 1960 wouldn’t work and given Nixon’s prior stances to that point it would look insincere pandering. The southern whites would be too suspicious to vote for him and liberal whites/blacks would be repulsed. He would get wiped out.
 
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