John Taylor: Nixon Thought The ‘60 Debate Didn’t Matter

Leading up to tonight’s debate, articles and blog posts too numerous to count have repeated the accepted wisdom that Richard Nixon lost in 1960 for one reason: Because he performed poorly– or, rather, looked unwell — in the first of his debates with John F. Kennedy.

The folks at Gallup aren’t quite as definitive in their view:

Gallup trends show that Kennedy and Nixon were about tied among registered voters in August and September polls leading up to that debate. Immediately after it, Kennedy was ahead by 3 percentage points, and ahead by 4 points by the time the fourth debate was held in late October. Given Kennedy’s ultimate margin of victory in the popular vote of only two-tenths of a percentage point, it is clear the debates didn’t produce a major shift in the structure of the election, but this debate-period boost in his support could very well have accounted for the outcome.

So today’s commentators notwithstanding, Gallup says there was “no major shift” as the result of the debate, though it “could very well have” accounted for Kennedy’s win (as other factors could have as well).

Mr. Nixon agreed with Gallup. I began working for him in New York City in the fall of 1980, when he was soaking up every poll he could find on the Reagan-Carter match up while reviewing his own experience 20 years before. He sent me to the library to dig out these same Gallup polls. He was especially interested in the ones before the first debate, which showed him and Kennedy within a percentage point, and right before the election, which was, like the election itself, too close to call.

RN said that pollsters were especially diligent about their work the weekend before an election so that their final poll result would line up nicely with the actual vote. That issue aside, he never thought he’d lost because of the debate. He believed that he and Kennedy were essentially tied throughout the summer and fall.

Here’s Gallup’s own summary of the effect of debates:

Gallup election polling trends since the advent of televised presidential debates a nearly a half-century ago reveal few instances in which the debates may have had a substantive impact on election outcomes. The two exceptions are 1960 and 2000, both very close elections in which even small changes could have determined who won. In two others — 1976 and 2004 — public preferences moved quite a bit around the debates, but the debates did not appear to alter the likely outcome.

There are some weasel words in there. What RN said was that debates don’t matter, period.