WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 1960 (UPI) - Vice President Richard M. Nixon today claimed he will win California's 32 electoral votes. Nixon, through his press secretary, Herbert Klein, said he is confident absentee ballots will give him "a safe margin" in his home state over Sen. John F. Kennedy.
With all but six of the state's 30,682 precincts reporting, the unofficial tabulation gave Kennedy 3,119,341 California votes to 3,085,940 for Nixon.
Some 230,000 absentee ballots have yet to be counted, however, and Nixon would have to get 57 per cent of them to change the outcome.
Even if Nixon should get California's electoral votes, he would be 45 short of the 269 needed to upset the national election.
Klein said:
"With the vote count practically completed in California, there's no question but that Vice President Nixon has carried the state.
"The vice president has been studying the final returns and, based on a consistent pattern in previous California elections, he is confident that the count of absentee ballots will give him a safe margin in California.
"The three-to-two Democratic edge in registration, which the vice president came within a few thousand of overcoming in the regular count, does not hold true in the absentees.
"I believe the final count of absentee ballots next week will give the vice president a majority of 15,000 to 20,000 in California."
Earlier, Republicans had challenged Democratic victory claims in several other areas where Kennedy apparently won but where the issue was still in doubt.
Other states besides California where Kennedy held paper-thin margins were Illinois and Alaska. The lead in Alaska switched today from Nixon to Kennedy by 10 votes and in Hawaii from Kennedy to Nixon by 117 votes.
In Chicago, Jim Brow, executive director of the Midwest Volunteers for Nixon, said reports today indicated Illinois' 27 electoral votes could still wind up in the Nixon column.
Unofficial results gave Kennedy Illinois by roughly 7,500 votes out of 4,700,000 cast. The vote was 2,358,586 to 2,350,965.
But Republicans conceded that even if the big states of California and Illinois switched to Nixon, Kennedy would still have enough electoral votes to be president provided unpledged electors in the South didn't bolt and throw the election into the House of Representatives. In that event, the Democratic majority in the House undoubtedly would support Kennedy.
The tally today gave Kennedy 33,369,582 votes, or 50.22 per cent. Nixon had 33,075,975 or 49.78 per cent. Kennedy won 22 states with 334 electoral votes. He was leading in Alaska, which has three electoral votes.
Nixon won 25 states with 188 electoral votes and was leading in New Mexico with four electoral votes.
In Hawaii, with three electoral votes, the citizens of the 50th state will have to wait several days to find out the result.
In the final tally yesterday, Kennedy won by 102 votes but booth officials found 200 ballots had not been credited to Nixon. A check today showed Nixon with 92,268; Kennedy, 92,151.
In Alaska, where Nixon had been ahead, Kennedy today forged into a 10-vote lead. But 2,000 absentee ballots have to be counted.
