What do they mean by this? Benjamin Harrison won in 1888 with a smaller popular vote, as did George W. Bush in 2000. What is the third example? (John Quincy Adams beat Andrew Jackson, but that was before the Civil War and was decided in the House of Representatives.)
Maybe they are finally admitting that Kennedy had fewer popular votes than Nixon? Quite apart from the allegations of voter fraud in Illinois and Texas that year, the usual figure for Kennedy's popular vote counts all the Democratic votes in Alabama as Kennedy votes, but the electors split their vote between Kennedy and Harry F. Byrd, and who is to say what the Democratic voters in the state were thinking when they cast their ballots? I wonder if anyone has researched the local newspapers or interviewed people who were of voting age in Alabama in 1960 to shed light on that. Without the Alabama popular vote, Nixon had a plurality.
The third example is 1876, Hayes versus Tilden.