John F. Kennedy's narrow popular vote margin in 1960 has already insured this presidential election a classic position in the roll call of close American elections. Whatever more substantial judgments historical perspective may bring, we can be sure that the 1960 election will do heavy duty in demonstrations to a reluctant public that after all is said and done, every vote does count. And the margin translated into “votes per precinct” will become standard fare in exhortations to party workers that no stone be left unturned.

The 1960 election is a classic as well in the license it allows for “explanations” of the final outcome. Any event or campaign strategem that might plausibly have changed the thinnest sprinkling of votes across the nation may, more persuasively than is usual, be called “critical.” Viewed in this manner, the 1960 presidential election hung on such a manifold of factors that reasonable men might despair of cataloguing them.

Nevertheless, it is possible to put together an account of the election in terms of the broadest currents influencing the American electorate in 1960. We speak of the gross lines of motivation which gave the election its unique shape, motivations involving millions rather than thousands of votes. Analysis of these broad currents is not intended to explain the hairline differences in popular vote, state by state, which edged the balance in favor of Kennedy rather than Nixon. But it can indicate quite clearly the broad forces which reduced the popular vote to a virtual stalemate, rather than any of the other reasonable outcomes between a 60-40 or a 40–60 vote division.

What combination of forces elects a President? Each electoral decision releases a flood of interpretive comment about the conditions, circumstances, and causes which have influenced the result. A very great assortment of factors is examined and varying estimates are made of the responsibility of each for the outcome. Certainly, interpretations of the most recent presidential contest have shown the variety of ideas Americans bring to the analysis of their national elections. Mr. Eisenhower's victory has been attributed to the satisfactions engendered by national prosperity; to the anxieties raised by the threat of war; to the moods of racial, ethnic, or other groupings in the population; to the personal attractiveness of the winning candidate; to the conservative temper of the electorate; to the impact of various issues; to changing party loyalties; to the growth of suburbia; to the progress of an electoral cycle; to events and strategems of the nominating conventions and the campaign; to the influence of the press and of the other mass media. The list could be revised or lengthened in many ways.

The extraordinary discrepancy in the popular vote for President Eisenhower and the vote for Republican Congressmen in the 1956 election dramatized a privilege which the American electorate exercises almost uniquely in the democratic world, the right of voters to split their ballots between the candidates of opposing political parties.

The fact of ballot splitting in American elections is of course a commonplace but it has not been widely studied and it is not well understood. The aggregative statistics from the 1956 election make it apparent that millions of voters must have chosen President Eisenhower and a Democratic congressman but they do not tell us how many voters split their ballots in the opposite direction or how many voted for president but not for Congressman, and they give us only the vaguest indications of what was in the voters' minds when they crossed party lines in marking their ballots.

In March, 1952 the Carnegie Corporation made available to the Social Science Research Council a research grant to support a major study of factors influencing the popular vote in the 1952 presidential election. Under the sponsorship of the Council's Committee on Political Behavior this project is currently being carried out by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan.

The study was developed around six major objectives:

1. 1. To identify the voters and non-voters, Republicans and Democrats, within four major geographical areas, in regard to

   a. socio-economic characteristics;

   b. attitudes and opinions on political issues;

   c. perceptions of the parties and the candidates.

2. 2. To compare these groups to the corresponding groups in the 1948 presidential election.

3. 3. To trace the resolution of the vote with particular attention to the undecided and changing voters.

4. 4. To study the impact of the activities of the major parties on the population.

5. 5. To analyze the nature and correlates of political party identification.

6. 6. To analyze the nature and correlates of political participation.