Considering how close the 1960 election was, I have to ask:
Suppose Kennedy wasn’t the nominee, and say Stu Symington or Lyndon Johnson were, does Nixon win the election?
How much can Kennedy’s victory be attributed to his good looks, especially in the debates, than anything else?
There’s no way to know. JFK’s good looks were an asset but they engaged in something new for the time, a televised debate where Nixon wasn’t made up well and looked dark and scowling in contrast to Kennedy. It’s difficult to say how much any of that made a difference though, Nixon represented the past and Kennedy the future at a time where the country was emerging from the war era that preceded. Changing demographics and the desire to cash in on ‘hot peace’ during a ‘cold war’ probably gave any optimistic Democrat a big advantage. But it was close enough that it could have gone either way because of small changes in the circumstances.
I’d say there were three major factors in the Kennedy vote:
Eisenhower - May have been a great President but he was dull, dull, dull. People wanted a change.
Nixon - He did not make a case for his Presidency. In the debates he repeatedly said ‘me too’ to Kennedy’s positions. He always presented himself as poor old Dick - just a replay of the Checkers speech.
Charisma - Kennedy is arguably the most charismatic President in history. Perhaps second to TDR. He was America. He sent us to the Moon.
He got my vote.
Crane
I’ve read that if Nixon hadn’t participated in the debates he would have won.
Kennedy understood television. Nixon didn’t. 1960 happened to be the first time that mattered.
Either that or Richard Daley stole the election in Illinois for Kennedy, just as he would have for any other Democratic candidate.
Take your pick.
I was 6yo at the time of the election. I went to catholic school, and the nuns told us to go home and tell our parents it was a sin to vote for anyone but Kennedy. OTOH I remember people saying that there would be a direct line between the White House and the Vatican and that the Pope would actually be running the country.
I’m not sure how much effect Kennedy’s religion had on the election or if it helped him or hurt him, but I think it did have an impact.
It mostly hurt him, but there were parts of the country where it definitely was seen as a plus. Including some wards in Chicago. 
I don’t know if it was Kennedy’s religion that swung Chicago his way, unless voter fraud is a religion.
I don’t think there is enough evidence to say that Kennedy/the Democrats stole the election, but things looked rather fishy. In Illinois, and also in Texas. Part of the perception of Texas came from the fact that Landslide Lyndon was Kennedy’s running mate - the guy who won his election to the Senate by 87 votes out of almost a million. The anecdote I heard was that many of the votes for LBJ in the Senate election were from people who voted in alphabetical order, and used the same handwriting. 
Although it was probably the case that LBJ just cheated a bit more than his opponent - voter fraud was rife in 1948 in Texas.
Kennedy is popular now, mostly because he was shot and people can project their dreams backwards onto him. He won the popular vote by less than two-tenths of one percent (although his margin in the Electoral College was much larger).
He was pretty and glamorous, and he had a pretty and glamorous wife, and he was young. But he got elected mostly for the same reasons other Presidents got elected, and for some reasons that are (thank God) much less common nowadays.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s cherished folklore that Daley stole Illinois and the election, but that’s pretty much all it is.
Even so, give the state’s 27 EV’s to Nixon and he loses 276-246 instead of 303-219.
There hasn’t been an election that a Republican lost where they didn’t claim voter fraud. It is Republican dogma that Democrats cannot win a fair election.
This only tends to disprove the idea that Daley’s machine miscounted/misreported results. It wouldn’t disprove the idea that Daley’s machine had votes cast that were improper (dead people, multiple votes, etc.).
IOW the lack of any evidence doesn’t interfere with you believing it anyway.
That’s why I called it cherished folklore.
If you remove JFK from the election, then you also remove Joe Kennedy’s considerable wealth and connections. Funding has always played a major role in election success.
[QUOTE=TriPolar]
…JFK’s good looks were an asset but they engaged in something new for the time, a televised debate where Nixon wasn’t made up well and looked dark and scowling in contrast to Kennedy…
[/QUOTE]
IIRC, Nixon was also quite ill at the time.
In any close election, you can point to anything you like as the true difference-maker. If you remove JFK from the election, you also remove anti-Catholic bigotry, for instance.
Where did I say I believe it? 
But YOU clearly don’t believe it, and then you cite evidence to refute it that, you know, doesn’t actually refute it. Which was my point.
You’re upset that I haven’t refuted a claim of yours for which you admit evidence does not exist?
That’s, um, not how it works.
Well, not everybody thought Kennedy was all that good looking, but he did manage a TV persona that came across better than Nixon, apparently.
We had the usual kid election in my school, and Kennedy won, but not by much. I remember it as being quite divisive, and at recess the fifth-graders in the class that elected Kennedy basically going to war against the class that elected Nixon. Fun times and a harbinger of things to come!
In those days we thought it mattered.
My recollection is that Kennedy’s Catholicism was HYUUUGE. Depending on the state. A standard Protestant with the same charisma would’ve wiped the floor with Nixon. That was the first election I could vote in. And did. Over and over (just joking).
“And the dead shall rise and vote again! And again!”
Sounds like religion to me.
I don’t recall claims of voter fraud in 2012, 2008, 1996, or 1992.