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How many losing presidential candidates eventually became president?
Wiki User
∙ 12y ago
Between 2 and 4 times, depending on how you count.
It has happened only once on a dual ticket, in the format you are familiar with today.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) lost the 1920 election as the vice-presidential nominee with James N. Cox to Warren G. Harding. He won in a landslide election 12 years later, in 1932, defeating incumbant Herbert Hoover.
In races before that, you probably wouldn't recognize how the races were run. Each president could have multiple running mates. A lot of the time, there were several candidates running for president with the same running mates. The election worked that the voter could vote for any president he wanted, and then also vote for whoever was listed as that president's running mate. Every vote for vice-president no matter who was listed at the top of the ticket counted.
James K. Polk lost the 1840 election as one of3potential vice-presidents running on the incumbant Martin Van Buren ticket versus 1 on the challenging William Henry Harrison ticket. Not only did his party loose the presidentialelection, he came in last among the4 vice-presidential candidates. He then won the 1844 election against Henry Clay.
And a special case....
Andrew Jackson lost the 1824 vice-presidential election coming in 4th place out of 6 (all 6 running as the bottom of multiple presidential tickets). He was listed as a possible vice president to 3 out of the 4 presidential candidates. Why was he not listed on the 4th presidential ticket? Because that was his ticket. He ran for president at the same time.... and won, but not really. No one won a majority, so the race went to the House of Representatives. Although he won more popularvotes and more electoral votes, he lost the vote in the house. He ran again in 1828 and won against his foe from the 1824 election, John Quincy Adams. The focus here is more that he lost the presidential election than loosing the vice-presidential election.
And another special case....
John Tyler lost the 1836 vice-presidential election. His party lost the presidential race, and he came in 3rd out of 4 in the vice-presidential race. He then ran for vice-president again in the 1840 election and won, and became president after only 30 days due to William Henry Harrison's famoulsy long winded speech in the middle of a cruddy day. He never actually won a presidential race, but still became president some time after loosing a vice-presidential race.
It has also happened 2-4 times, however, that the incumbant vice-president won the presidential election.
George H.W. Bush won the 1988 presidential election after winning the 1980 and 1984 vice-presidential elections on the Ronald Regan ticket.
Martin Van Buren won the 1836 presidential election after winning the 1832 vice-presidential election on the Andrew Jackson ticket.
and 2 special cases
John Adams won the 1796 presidential election. However, there was yet a different system in place during the 1792 and 1789 elections where there were no votes for vice-president, it was just the person who got the second most votes for president that became vice-president.
Thomas Jefferson won the 1800 presidential election under this same system, where he ran as the sitting vice-president against the sitting president and won (making John Adams the only former president to then serve as vice-president).
So it seems that it does not matter if you win or loose a vice-presidential election, you have equal chances of eventually becoming president. (In fact it is far more common that the vice-president become president upon the death of the president.)
Wiki User
∙ 15y ago
Wiki User
∙ 12y agoThomas Jefferson was defeated by John Adams in 1796 but won in 1800.
Andrew Jackson lost in 1824 but won in 1828 and 1832.
Richard Nixon lost in 1960 to Kennedy but won in 1968.
Grover Cleveland lost his re-election bid in 1888 but came back to become president again in 1892.
There have been others who ran for their party's nomination and failed to get it, but later got it and went on to win the presidency. James Buchanan, Lyndon Johnson , Ronald Reagan. George H. W. Bush, and maybe others had that experience.
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What is the main thing of the twelfth amendment?
The 12th amendment is that Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates will appear on 2 separate ballets. For example in the last presidential election Obama ran for President with Biden as Vice President and then on a separate ballet McCain ran with Palin as Vice President, rather with all 4 running for president. Before this the winner of the election was the President and the runner-up became the Vice President, but that became a problem because of partisan differences and thus we have the 12th amendment.
Who were the two candidates in the 1960 presidential debates?
Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy. (Kennedy won the debates and the election. Nixon became president in 1968.)
Who became president in the 1910?
There was no presidential election that year.
Why was the offices of president and vice president created?
They are called for in the US Constitution but no means of election is specified. Originally they were individual candidates for president, whoever got the most votes became president and whoever got the second most votes became vice president. This was eventually found to result in presidents and vice presidents that could not work together well. So eventually the parties started picking a president/vice president pair and they were elected together.
Who was John Quincy Adams running mate?
IN 1796 when Adams was elected for president, there were no vice-presidential candidates. The man who finished second in the presidential election, became the vice-president. This system was changed by the 12th amendment,
Name two presidents who became the presidential candidates of independent or third parties?
Franklin Smith and John Taylor
1776-1787 how did candidates campaign?
None. There was no constitution in this time and no candidates. It wasn't until 1789 that Washington became President.
What happened in 1841 after president William Henry Harrison died in office and has continued to be the practice for filling a presidential vacancy ever since?
The Vice president became the president.
Who did George Washington appoint to be vice president before he was inaugurated?
Presidents did not appoint Vice Presidents until after ratification of the 25th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in February, 1967. In the first four U. S. Presidential Elections (1789-1800), the ballots made no distinction between Presidential candidates and Vice Presidential candidates. Each elector voted for two people. Whoever ended up with the second-highest total of electoral votes became the Vice President. In both of the elections in which George Washington was elected President, John Adams came in second and was therefore the Vice President under President Washington.
How was john adams elected to be vice president?
The way the first few presidential elections worked was that the winner became president, and the runner-up became vice-president.
What a result of the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution?
The president and vice president ran together in elections.
Who were the two major party candidates for the presidency in 1932?
In the 1932 US presidential election, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ran against the incumbent president, Herbert Hoover, a Republican. Most voters blamed the Depression on Hoover so Roosevelt became the 32nd US president.
