1960 United States Presidential Election
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50 free 1960 United States Presidential Election trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The 1960 presidential election was one of the closest in American history. John F. Kennedy, a young Democratic senator, faced Richard Nixon, the sitting vice president, in a contest shaped by the Cold War, by questions about Kennedy's Catholic faith, and by a new force in politics: television. This quiz covers the whole story of the election of 1960: the primaries and conventions, the running mates, the televised debates, the campaign's stumbles and turning points, the state-by-state results, and the recounts and fraud allegations that followed a photo-finish vote. It is written for students revising the Kennedy–Nixon race, for teachers who want a ready-made classroom quiz, and for history fans who think they know how the 1960 presidential election results came out. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Richard Nixon famously refuse to wear for the first televised debate of 1960?
Makeup
Makeup was declined, so Nixon, still underweight after a hospital stay, looked pale and unshaven on screen beside a tanned, rested Kennedy.
Q 02Who phoned Richard Nixon straight after the first 1960 debate to ask whether he was ill?
His mother
His mother rang at once to ask if he was sick, having watched him sweat under the studio lights in a light gray suit that faded into the backdrop.
Q 03Which singer re-recorded his hit High Hopes with new words as John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign theme?
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra first sang High Hopes in the 1959 film A Hole in the Head, where it won the Oscar for best original song, before reworking it for the campaign trail.
Q 04Which Senate majority leader from Texas did John F. Kennedy pick as his running mate in 1960?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson had been Kennedy's chief rival at the convention, and his place on the ticket helped the Democrats hold Texas and much of the South.
Q 05Which civil rights leader's 1960 jailing in Georgia led John F. Kennedy to phone the man's wife?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested at an Atlanta sit-in; Kennedy's calls helped free him, and King's father then endorsed the Democrat.
Q 06Which baseball pioneer endorsed Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson backed Nixon after meeting both candidates, against the mood of most African American voters, and later praised Kennedy's stance on civil rights.
Q 07Who became the second Catholic elected US president, sixty years after John F. Kennedy's 1960 win?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden won in 2020, ending a six-decade gap; in 1960 a Catholic president was contested enough that Kennedy had to promise Protestant ministers his church would not steer him.
Q 08What awkward duty fell to Richard Nixon as vice president weeks after he lost the 1960 election?
Certifying his own defeat
Certifying his own defeat came with the job: the vice president presides when Congress counts the electoral votes, so Nixon announced Kennedy's 303 to his own 219.
Q 09John F. Kennedy was the youngest man elected president, but which predecessor took office younger?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when William McKinley's assassination made him president in 1901, so Kennedy holds the record only for winning an election.
Q 10Which state's 1960 electoral votes went from Nixon to Kennedy after a recount found a 115-vote lead?
Hawaii
Hawaii, voting for president for the first time, had first been certified for Nixon by 141 votes; both parties' electors met and cast rival ballots while the court fight went on.
Q 11Which city hosted the first televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon in September 1960?
Chicago
Chicago's CBS studio staged it for an audience some put at 70 million viewers, and two months earlier the same city had hosted the Republican convention that nominated Nixon.
Q 12Who quipped in 1960 that a week might be needed to recall one Richard Nixon idea worth adopting?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower later called it a joke, but the remark undercut his vice president's claim to experience so badly that Democrats turned it into a television commercial.
Q 13Which Soviet satellite's 1957 launch fed the fears of falling behind that ran through the 1960 race?
Sputnik
Q 21Which Cold War alarm did John F. Kennedy sound in 1960, though it proved entirely fictional?
The missile gap
The missile gap, a supposed Soviet lead in nuclear rockets, existed only in exaggerated estimates; the United States in fact held a clear advantage.
Q 22Which city hosted the 1960 Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy on the first ballot?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles saw Kennedy nominated indoors at the Memorial Sports Arena, but he gave his acceptance speech next door in the open air of the Memorial Coliseum.
Q 23Which heavily Protestant state's 1960 primary proved a Catholic like Kennedy could win there?
West Virginia
Sputnik was the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth, and its launch led American leaders to warn that the nation trailed communist countries in science and technology.
Q 14With which Soviet leader did Richard Nixon spar in the 1959 'Kitchen Debate' in Moscow?
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev and Nixon traded impromptu arguments about capitalism and communism beside a model American kitchen at a trade exhibition in the Soviet capital.
Q 15Which relative managed John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign, rounding up delegates at the convention?
His brother Robert
His brother Robert secured the last critical delegates for a first-ballot win as campaign manager, then served as attorney general in the new administration.
Q 16What did Richard Nixon injure on a car door, costing him two weeks of the 1960 campaign?
His knee
His knee became infected after he struck it in North Carolina, putting him in hospital in August and leaving him thin and tired when the debates began.
Q 17Which volunteer program did John F. Kennedy propose in a late-night 1960 campus speech in Michigan?
The Peace Corps
The Peace Corps began as an idea Kennedy put to students at 2 a.m. from the steps of the Michigan Union in Ann Arbor, where a plaque now marks the spot.
Q 18After Kennedy met Nixon in 1960, no presidential debates were held until Jimmy Carter faced whom?
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford met Carter three times in 1976, ending a sixteen-year gap, after which debates became a regular fixture of presidential campaigns.
Q 19A disputed survey found Richard Nixon won the first 1960 debate among people who followed it how?
On the radio
On the radio, a Sindlinger survey scored it 49 to 21 percent for Nixon, yet the same poll had television viewers almost evenly split, and its sample was never reported.
Q 20What name did John F. Kennedy give his agenda when accepting the 1960 Democratic nomination?
The New Frontier
The New Frontier, he said, was a set of challenges rather than a set of promises, a deliberate contrast with the New Deal of the 1930s.
West Virginia gave Kennedy more than 60 percent of the vote, and his beaten rival withdrew from the race that same night.
Q 24Which constitutional change kept the two-term incumbent out of the 1960 presidential election?
The 22nd Amendment
The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits presidents to two elected terms, which made the popular incumbent the first one legally unable to run again.
Q 25Residents of which place could not vote in the 1960 election but gained electoral votes by 1964?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. was shut out for the last time in 1960; the 23rd Amendment, sent to the states that June and ratified in 1961, gave the capital a say in choosing presidents.
Q 26Which Minnesota senator lost two 1960 primaries to John F. Kennedy and later became vice president?
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey, short of money, likened fighting the Kennedy family to an independent merchant competing against a chain store, and quit after his second defeat.
Q 27Which mayor's machine was accused of padding John F. Kennedy's narrow 1960 margin in Illinois?
Richard J. Daley
Richard J. Daley's Cook County gave Kennedy a 456,000-vote cushion that outweighed Nixon's lead across the rest of Illinois, and every Republican challenge to the count fell short.
Q 28With no electoral majority for Kennedy or Nixon in 1960, which body would have chosen the president?
The House
The House would have decided, each state delegation casting a single vote; a shift of under 19,000 votes in Illinois and Missouri would have sent the contest there.
Q 29By roughly how many votes did Kennedy lead Nixon in the reported 1960 national popular vote?
About 113,000
About 113,000 votes, a margin of 0.17 percent, separated them, the closest popular-vote result of the 20th century.
Q 30Which Republican, unseated as a senator by Kennedy in 1952, was Nixon's running mate in 1960?
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., by then ambassador to the United Nations, was picked for his foreign-policy weight but ran a lethargic campaign that left Nixon furious.