Why did Nixon nearly lose California in 1960?

[Mr. Smith]

In 1960, Nixon was the incumbent vice president and was running to replace a popular term-limited incumbent.  California was his home state, and yet he very nearly lost it to Kennedy.  California was originally called for Kennedy, in fact; Nixon only won it after absentee votes were counted.  How did Nixon nearly blow it in his own home state?

He only won because he was a native son (and the perfect middle ground between conservative and Rockefeller-esque), and Kennedy didn't do enough Bay Area campaigning.

Really, JFK should've won the entire Bay Area (sans Marin,Sonoma, and Santa Cruz since those were Rocky GOP counties before the '80's)...but he only got San Francisco and the minority heavy East Bay.

The rest went as could be expected in California before Reagan/Bush alienated the state with the far-right insanity [yes Reagan won huge, but there's a good reason Dukakis almost won, and Reagan did worse against Mondale than Carter]:

- The "Solid South" Northern Inland counties went to JFK [though not to the same extent as Truman], except for the more conservative ones (for the same reasons most of The South went to JFK but Virginia and Tennessee didn't)

- The Rocky GOP Bay Area [sans the good East Bay and SF] tilted to Nixon. However, a little more campaigning would've flipped San Mateo and Santa Clara.

- Democratic LA went to Kennedy

- The rest of the state with patterns like the Mountain West favored Nixon.

Finally, JFK did well with immigrants.

If it were JFK vs Rockefeller or Romney, and JFK did as he did with that layout, he would've won...by the same margin Ford beat Carter.

[Mr. Smith]

Most of the GOP wins there outside of '80 were inside the GOP averages.  It is amazing how they won there so many times in a row. 

CA was one of three blown calls by the networks that night, with the other two being AK and HI.

Not really, all the 60's elections had the Democrats at serious disadvantage numbers wise. Ultimately JFK was just a really good fit.

Carter on the other hand was a really bad fit, hence why Ted won the primary and Mondale did better in '84. Frank Church could've flipped it, Scoop Jackson could've flipped it.

Dukakis losing is the big surprise really.

[Mr. Smith]

Democrats had a big wave in California in 1958. Might have been some lingering effects from that.

Eh, not that big. It's a shocker to hear in this day and age, but Knowland and Knight were popular where they were, the position switch was costly. It had little to do with R vs D, and they would've easily won if they hadn't switched [ok,ok Knowland would've been...Brown Sr would still have made the gubernatorial against Knight competitive as the good, moderate, token Democrat]