Talk:1960 United States presidential election in Alabama

State primary

I'm confused about the state primary. It must have been decided somewhere that the eleven electors would be split into six unpledged and five loyalists, but where exactly, and when?. This book says there was a "spiritedly contested statewide primary", and further down suggests there were two, on May 3 and June 2. That would mean that the loyalists were pledged to vote for "the Democratic candidate", since the candidate hadn't been chosen yet. But the Democratic Party presidential primaries, 1960 article does not have Alabama in it, and I can't find anything else about it on the web. Scolaire (talk) 17:22, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Okay, here's a book showing a primary in Alabama on May 3, so that's part of the mystery solved. Scolaire (talk) 09:42, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Names on ballots?

When people actually went to vote on election day in November in Alabama, did Nixon or Kennedy's name appear on the ballots? Specifically, were voters made aware on the ballots which Democratic electors were unpledged and which were pledged to Kennedy? Was it at all common knowledge which was which? Was there any indication that this affected how people voted? --Jfruh (talk) 06:16, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

This page doesn't actually say that "Kennedy" or "Unpledged" appeared on the ballots, but strongly suggests that they did. For instance, it says that "if someone wanted to vote for the six unpledged electors and five of the Republican ones, they could." Certainly, the voters were aware of who they were voting for, as all the unpledged electors got more votes than any of the Kennedy electors, and all the Democratic electors got more votes than any of the Republican ones. Scolaire (talk) 08:55, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Proposal on Representing the Vote for Electors

I have been thinking already on how best to represent elector elections in other States that had them, and I think that I've come to a solution that we can all agree to that will both represent the votes as they were cast, without distorting the vote in any way. If we were to look at the votes as some kind of Approval voting, we could then read the results as such -

• Frank Dixon, an Unpledged Elector, was approved by (324,050 - 57.41%) voters out of (564,478) who participated.
• C. G. Allen, an Elector Pledged to Kennedy, was approved by (318,303 - 56.39%) voters out of (564,478) who participated.
• Cecil Durham, an Elector Pledged to Nixon, was approved by (237,981 - 42.16%) voters out of (564,478) who participated.

United States presidential election in Alabama, 1960
Party		Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Electoral votes
	Unpledged Democratic	No Nominee	324,050	57.41%	6
	Democratic	John F. Kennedy	318,303	56.39%	5
	Republican	Richard Nixon	237,981	42.16%	0
	States' Rights	Orval Faubus	4,367	0.77%	0
	Independent	Rutherford Decker	2,106	0.37%	0
	Ind. Afro-American	Clemon King	1,485	0.26%	0
	Independent	Write-Ins	231	0.04%	0

I think it would be the most accurate representation we could make without distorting the facts as they are. --Ariostos (talk) 18:13, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, there is a certain amount of distortion there. First of all, there was no "Unpledged Democratic" Party. Both unpledged and Kennedy electors were selected in the Democratic primary, so the current table is correct in that respect. Second, the unpledged electors were known to support Harry Byrd, and did vote for Harry Byrd, so saying "No Nominee" does distort the facts as they are, even if it is technically correct. The table as it is – with the footnotes – represents that fact both accurately and fairly. As regards percentages, I have always thought it was weird to say that the unpledged electors got more votes than anybody else, but 0% of the share. I would have no problem with changing that to 57% (in the infobox as well), since the article already explains that tallying the votes in that way leads to a total far higher than the actual number of votes cast. Scolaire (talk) 19:19, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

I suppose that is a fair analysis. Taking your suggestions into account, I reconfigured the box to more accurately represent the facts as they were. I've put both Kennedy and the Unpledged Electors under the Democratic label for the purposes of the infobox, with their differences being in the candidate they are pledged to; the Unpledged Electors are still listed as having no nominee as that was the case until a week or so before the electoral college cast their votes, but I've added in parens that they did ultimately cast their votes for Harry Byrd. Would something like the below work? --Ariostos (talk) 03:12, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

United States presidential election in Alabama, 1960
Party		Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Electoral votes
	Democratic	No Nominee (Cast Votes for Harry F. Byrd)	324,050	57.41%	6
		John F. Kennedy	318,303	56.39%	5
	Republican	Richard Nixon	237,981	42.16%	0
	States' Rights	Orval Faubus	4,367	0.77%	0
	Independent	Rutherford Decker	2,106	0.37%	0
	Independent	Clemon King	1,485	0.26%	0
	Independent	Write-Ins	231	0.04%	0
	Totals		564,478	100.00%	11

I think that works much better. The only thing I would change is the figure of 100.00%, which is obviously not the total of the figures in the Percentage column (actually, its not 100.00% in the current version either; it's 99.2%, and if you used the unpledged figure instead of the Kennedy figure in would be 100.24%). You could put the actual total of 157.40%, but I think using a dash there would be the better option. I also think that "Independent" should only be linked the first time. By the way, it's not Clemon King, it's Clennon King (see the Mississippi Encyclopedia). --Scolaire (talk) 10:32, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Representation of votes for Kennedy and Byrd

The math in the articles is not correct.

The article states that Kennedy received 318,303 and Byrd got 324,050. Then, the article shows three cases where the 324,050 votes for Byrd, from the Unpledged electors, could be split and in one scenario, 5/11 would go to Kennedy of 147,295 votes and 6/11 to Byrd for 176,755 votes. The article states that in this scenario, Nixon would have won the majority of votes in Alabama and nationwide. However, Kennedy is shown to have 318,303 and the addition of 147,295 votes would have yielded 465,598 votes for Kennedy, far more than Nixon's 237,981 votes.

I believe this was overlooked in the sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dkf12 (talk • contribs) 15:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to add 318,303 + 147,295. That would be double-counting votes. The calculation is that Kennedy won the equivalent of 147,295 votes instead of the more commonly reported 318,303 votes, not in addition. —Granger (talk · contribs) 17:52, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

The article indicates Kennedy receiving 318,303 votes. The article shows this and discusses splitting the 324,050 votes shown for Byrd. According to the statement adding 147,295 to 318,303 votes would be double counting votes, then the article already shows Kennedy with 318,303 votes AND Byrd with 324,050. Isn't this double counting the votes? The second case scenario were Byrd only got 5,724 votes with the Unpledged electors makes the most sense. Why does the article show 318,303 for Kennedy and 324,050 votes for Byrd? Dkf12 (talk) 18:58, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

In a sense, counting 318,303 and 324,050 separately is double-counting, yes: as the article says, this gives "a total much higher than the actual votes cast". You'll notice that the percentages in the infobox add up to more than 100%. For better or for worse that seems to be what most (but not all) sources do when discussing this election. The confusing nature of this election is because some voters voted for more than one candidate (in the sense that they voted for multiple electors who cast their electoral college votes for different candidates). —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:28, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Map

This has to be one of the ugliest maps I've ever seen. Is there some way of representing the information without having a streak through almost every county? Kingofthedead (talk) 23:49, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Method for relative %

I know this can see as original research, but this is method of calculating the % in this cases

the total vote became all the preferences expressed, in this case a max of 564,242x11 (maybe less if some elector did not express all the 11 preferences) after add all the preferences of the Republican great electors, and use this for calculating the % add all the preferences of unpledged Democratic great elector, and use this for calculating the % and so on