Republicans: From Anguish to Analysis

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In the grey dawn of last fall's defeat, the Republican Party wrung its hands in anguished awareness of the fact that Jack Kennedy's 112,803-vote margin over Dick Nixon was the narrowest since the 1888 presidential race between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Last week, turning from anguish to analysis, the Republican National Committee issued a statistic-studded report on the 1960 voting trends. Items:

¶ The major voting turnover was among Roman Catholics: where 49% went for Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, only 22% supported Nixon in 1960. The G.O.P. held its own among Protestants: 63% voted for Ike and 62% for Nixon. Said the National Committee report: "A fair estimate would be that Kennedy received 6,000,000 more votes from Catholics than did Stevenson in 1956, out of a total increase of 8,000,000 in the Democratic presidential vote."

¶ The Republicans suffered in both cities and suburbs. Of 40 U.S. cities with more than 300,000, Nixon carried only 14 to Kennedy's 26; in 1956 Eisenhower carried 29 to Stevenson's eleven in the same cities. In 19 major suburban areas, the Republicans gained in only one—Kansas City. In ten of those areas the G.O.P. decline was greater than the average national decline—although seven were still carried by Republicans.

¶ The Republicans lost ground with most voting "blocs": they went from 39% to 32% among Negroes, from 25% to 19% among Jews, from 43% to 35% among union members. They held on to a majority of the women's vote—but with just 51%, against Ike's 61%. Only the farmer remained staunchly Republican: Ike got 57.4% of the vote in farm counties and Nixon took 57.1%.

The wonder of it all was how Nixon stayed in the race at all. The answer: he stayed close to Kennedy in many of the fields examined by the National Committee—and he won the support of millions of voters who could not be placed in any neat category.