Iowa, 1960

[FerrisBueller86]

In 1960, Nixon won Iowa by over 13 percentage points even though he lost the election.  Iowa was Nixon's 7th strongest state.  JFK carried only 6 counties and didn't even carry Johnson County (which contains Iowa City), which has never been carried by a Republican presidential nominee since then.

Was JFK that unpopular in Iowa?  Was Nixon that popular in Iowa?  Or was this Iowa's last year as East Nebraska?  (I notice that Eisenhower carried Iowa twice, Dewey came within 3 percentage points of winning Iowa, and FDR only won Iowa twice.)

Also, what caused Iowa and Nebraska to diverge politically since the 1960s and 1970s?  Nebraska has remained heavily Republican ever since.  In 1988, Dukakis carried Iowa by 10 percentage points in his landslide defeat.  True, Iowa was hit hard by the farming crisis, but Dukakis also lost Nebraska by 21 percentage points that year even though you would think Nebraska would have been affected by the same crisis.

Of course, I'm sure that PBrunsel is hoping that last year was the beginning of the process of Iowa reverting back to East Nebraska.

[PBrunsel]

Once in Iowa JFK stated with his New England accent, "What's the matter with the American fah-mer?" One man in the crowd yelled up, "Were stah-ving Jack!"

[WI_Dem]

One has to remember that, on average, Iowa was a pretty hard core Republican state around that time. Just eight years later, in another close election, Nixon blew out Humphrey by a similar margin.