1960: The Making of the President

To set up 1960: The Making of the President, place the map board in the center and assign candidates Nixon and Kennedy to their respective players. Place starting support cubes in designated states based on candidate icons, set candidate markers in their home states, and prepare the issue tiles on their track. Shuffle the campaign deck and place the endorsement deck nearby. Each player takes their colored cubes, two momentum tokens, and an exhausted candidate card. Fill the political capital bag with twelve cubes from each player, and set aside the debate board and extra components for later use.

The main objective of the game is to recreate the 1960 US presidential election by accumulating the highest number of electoral votes. Players compete across the map by establishing leads in various states, controlling regional media, advancing their positions on national issues, and successfully navigating debates and the final election day to claim victory.

Each of the nine turns is split into several structured phases. It begins with the initiative phase where cards are drawn and an initiative check is performed using the capital bag. Next, the activity phase allows players to alternate playing five cards each, using them either for unique events or for campaign points to travel, campaign, advertise, or influence issues. Following this, the momentum phase awards bonuses based on media control and issue tracks. Finally, players place cards into their campaign strategy stacks, bank their accumulated rest cubes back into the bag, and prepare for the next turn.

Scoring happens decisively at the end of turn nine during the election phase. Players add extra cubes to the bag from media support, issues, and momentum, then perform final support checks using stored strategy cards. Empty states are resolved via endorsements or default candidate associations. Finally, players collect state seal tokens for all states where they maintain support, flip them to reveal electoral vote values, and sum them up. The player with the highest total electoral votes wins the presidency.

The game officially concludes at the conclusion of the ninth turn after the election phase is fully resolved. Once all state seals are collected and electoral votes are tallied, any ties are broken using specific tie-breaker criteria such as total states won or total support cubes remaining on the board.