NBC Live radio coverage of the 1960 Presidential Election returns between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon.
This rare archived off the air recording begins with 4% of the vote counted. Commercials during this radio broadcast are included.
The 1960 United States presidential election was the 44th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. The Democratic ticket of Senator John F. Kennedy and, his running mate, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson narrowly defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon and his running mate, U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. This was the first election in which 50 states participated, marking the first participation of Alaska and Hawaii, and the last in which the District of Columbia did not. This made it the only presidential election where the threshold for victory was 269 electoral votes. It was also the first election in which an incumbent president—in this case, Dwight D. Eisenhower—was ineligible to run for a third term because of the term limits established by the 22nd Amendment.