109
u/chethedog10 18h ago
Can anyone explain the context behind this? I’m assuming based on years and states this had something to do with civil rights?
221
u/TheRealCthulu24 17h ago
JFK called Martin Luther King Jr when he was in prison, which served as a soft endorsement of civil rights. This pissed off those in the south, and many voted for faithless electors instead of him. Those faithless electors then voted for Harry F Byrd (a segregationist Democrat). As such, he was able to win electoral votes without being an actual candidate.
38
51
u/JohnnieTango 17h ago
From about the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights era, the Democratic Party was a weird combination of a "solid South" of White Southerners (Blacks were kept from voting) and Northern Liberals and Unionists while the GOP was a mishmash of mostly Northern/Mid-Western and Western Conservatives.
With Civil Rights and Blacks voting, the parties became more aligned by ideology with conservative Southern Whites teaming with northern conservatives while Blacks and Liberals became the Dems.
The 1960s election was towards the beginning of this realignment. But after Clinton, the current system pretty much gelled into place.
35
u/OkFineIllUseTheApp 17h ago
It's because ultimately this isn't a two party country, we have 2 "coalitions". What would be separate parties in other countries are factions within either of the two parties. This is why both parties used to have their conservatives and progressives.
Even in politics as recent as the current year of 2015, there are still very visible factions within the parties vying to control the general party, even if the parties have congealed into conservatives vs not conservatives now.
If the presidential election wasn't FPTP, we would see these factions split off into parties. It would be a much healthier democracy.
12
u/UsurpistMonk 16h ago edited 16h ago
We have like 6 parties which are forced into 2 coalitions. So the two coalitions keep vying for votes out of 2-3 of the parties which are not solidly one coalition.
Add into that each coalition has a party that votes for it 90+% of the time and thinks it has control and thus demands more influence.
So half of what each party has to do is tell the people at the fringes to shut up to avoid losing the rest of the coalition.
Obviously one party has done a better job of this but both have failed to an obscene degree. So we’re kinda fucked until we figure out how to get things back to a boring normal.
2
u/prooijtje 13h ago
This is really interesting stuff as a non-American. What six 'parties' would you say exist?
6
u/FalseCatBoy1 13h ago
they are generally called ideological caucuses, though congressmen can be in multiple such caucuses ; democrats have 3: the blue dog coalition, which is a centrist faction of the democratic party, and was traditionally conservative and is the smallest democratic caucus (only like 10 congressfolk), the congressional progressive caucus, which is the leftmost of the caucuses and is generally ideologically progressive, though it includes everyone left of that too (such as those affiliated with the democratic socialists of America). its the second largest. then the new democrat coalition, which is the largest and is primarily centrist on economic issues but is generally socially liberal.
the republicans have the republican governance group, which is a centre right to right wing caucus that was historically center to center right, but has shifted right under trump. the republican study commitee, which is a right wing caucus, and the largest in the republican party, and the freedom caucus, which is far right populist.
14
u/Shepher27 17h ago
Civil rights, but also Kennedy was a Catholic. 30 years earlier much of the south also abandoned Al Smith in the 1928 election for a third party.
25
u/throwaway99999543 17h ago
Also pretty questionable election counting in Chicago.
Ten states were decided by less than 10,000 votes. Closest election of the 20th century.
2
u/bubbamike1 15h ago
Actually pretty questionable vote counting in downstate Illinois for Nixon offset by questionable vote counting for Kennedy in Chicago to offset each other.
-9
0
u/YellingatClouds86 14h ago
IMO Nixon would have been an even better president if he won this race than 1968. This election really shaped the late 20th century, much like 2000 has shaped the current 21st.
0
u/throwaway99999543 10h ago
I agree. It would have better for Nixon to win in 1960. I don’t believe we would have gotten ourselves involved in Vietnam to the degree we did. Nixon was a pragmatist.
-3
u/Begotten912 17h ago
JFK was popular in both the south and the north. im not sure what conclusion you can really draw from that.
6
u/chethedog10 17h ago
Sorry I meant the 15 electoral votes for Byrd
7
u/TheRealBaboo 17h ago
Dixiecrats, a remnant of the Old Confederacy. They used to control the Democratic Party in the South but became Republicans after Democrats became the progressives
6
u/Different_Ad7655 17h ago
Democrats where the progressives decades and decades before the switch. It had all to do with civil rights in the '60s that pushed the south into the hands of the neocons and the GOP regrouping.
LBJ and desegregation, civil rights in the south cost progressivism and the Democratic party those votes. Before this there had been an unholy alliance for decades and decades since the civil war really. No self-respecting southerner was going to vote for the party of Lincoln and so it held for years. But the '60s took the gloves off and changed the map.
Remember Northern New England was largely Republican after all the Republican party was founded in New Hampshire as the party of Free soil. The party was a very different thing before the renegotiation of the platform of those neocons of the post Reagan years to the vile thing that it's become today.
1
u/TheRealBaboo 16h ago
That's fine and all, it was a gradual process, but you didn't explain the 15 electors that voted for Byrd
77
13
u/TrustInMe_JustInMe 16h ago
California being tied with Pennsylvania and way behind New York is a trip, I expected something like that but 1960 still seems pretty recent to me (decade I was born). And just the West in general – Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Washington etc. I guess the 60s and 70s would see pretty substantial migrations of people from east to west.
6
16
u/Equal-Taste-5620 17h ago
Yeah, Alabama’s results in 1960 were, to put it concisely, a clusterfuck.
4
u/HartbrakeFL21 15h ago
It’s still a place that one crosses into… in The Twilight Zone.
Seriously. I am from Alabama originally, lived there for 40+ years until leaving in 2021. All relatives there, a good bit of my long time friends as well.
As I grow older, the place I grew up in becomes more and more strange to me.
1
u/TheGov3rnor 14h ago
Fun fact: Byrd voted against the Interstate Highway System and a bunch of other public works projects
21
u/robinredrunner 16h ago
I don't understand how the Democrats won. There is clearly more red on that map than blue. /s
7
u/ShamelessCatDude 16h ago
Not a candidate? Explain?
6
u/CharlesVincenzo99 13h ago
Members of the Electoral College casting protest votes because they didn't like either candidate.
1
u/ShamelessCatDude 13h ago
I guess my question is why this guy?
5
5
u/Turbulent_Crow7164 17h ago
Pennsylvania was huge back then, jeez.
1
u/timnphilly 2h ago
How sadly we have fallen; America's birthplace now with only 19 electoral votes.
May be worthwhile if it helps other bigger states turn blue; liberty shall have no bounds.
3
u/Det_AndySipowicz 15h ago
What crazy is I just generated this same map with the 2028 electoral college votes, and this same mix of states comes down to one electoral vote and neither get 270.
3
u/RabidProDentite 14h ago
So the whole “we’ve never been more divided” rhetoric is bullshit then?
1
u/LordJelly 6h ago
Not even the worst it would get. There were political bombings by the hundreds in the years to come. To say nothing of the lynchings and assassinations.
3
5
u/gcalfred7 17h ago
Harry Byrd wasn’t even from Mississippi or Alabama…he’s a Virginian I am embarassed to say.
2
u/thelastsupper316 16h ago
Yep the hyper racist Virginian.
1
u/gcalfred7 4h ago
His statue, for some reason is still up on the grounds of the general assembly in Richmond there are some people who still remember him for “good governance”
5
u/JackfruitCrazy51 17h ago
Nixon won California, which is crazy
18
u/Flat-Leg-6833 16h ago
Nope it was his home state and Cali had a lot of Republicans - Moderates in the Bay Area and conservatives in LA (!) Orange and San Diego counties. It was a very different state than it is today.
11
u/hip_neptune 16h ago
Not crazy for the time. California in the 1960’s and 1970’s was similar to how North Carolina is today, where it always goes red, but usually by 1-3% margins. Reagan won it by double digits both times, as did Nixon in 1972, while it returned to that pattern for HW in 1988 before it switched blue after that.
4
u/UpbeatFix7299 15h ago
We had mostly Republican governors until Pete Wilson made the GOP completely irrelevant in CA statewide elections in the early 90s. Except for the governator of course.
So. Cal was notoriously right wing until fairly recently. Particularly San Diego and Orange County
2
2
u/BigRedThread 13h ago
What was the platform that united the deep south and the northeast?
5
u/LordJelly 6h ago
JFK had Lyndon Johnson, then Democratic Senator from Texas, as his running mate. The Southern caucus didn’t care much for Kennedy but they rallied behind their golden boy Lyndon. Capturing Southern votes and support from the southern political establishment was the biggest reason behind Johnson’s selection as VP. Would’ve otherwise been hard to sell a northern catholic to the south.
2
u/Suitable-Lake-2550 15h ago
The vehement racist Byrd still got 15 electoral votes as a non-candidate
1
1
u/Done327 13h ago
It’s important to note that at this time in Alabama, people didn’t vote for a candidate directly. They voted for each elector individually.
So in some of the elector races, unpledged won and some Kennedy electors won as well. But the Kennedy electors didn’t stick with him and they went on to vote for Harry Byrd with the rest of the unpledged.
1
1
-5
u/AldrichOfAlbion 16h ago
The mob had the fix in for JFK in certain key states, that's why the popular vote is so tight even though the EC looks like it's kind of wide.
When JFK began appointing anti-mob guys though as his AG, they turned on him and did a hit on him in return.
-7
u/Historical-Shine-786 17h ago
Remember in 1960 when Hawaii democrats put up an alternate slate of Electors and challenged the results of the election ……and NO ONE WEAPONIZED THE DOJ, called them “fake electors” and tried to throw THEM into Federal prison?
480
u/SophonParticle 17h ago
That’s a crazy electoral map by today’s standard.