The incumbent president enjoys such an enormous political advantage, that he has usually won re-election. There are a few exceptions, mainly when the incumbent is so unpopular it overcomes his structural advantages. Here are all the failures to be re-elected, ordered by date. All of them are interesting in some way.
1800 Thomas Jefferson v John Adams
41,330 to 25,952 (15,378 difference)
61.4% to 38.6% (22.8% difference)
73 to 65 electors
1828 Andrew Jackson v John Quincy Adams
642.553 to 500,897 (141,656 difference)
56.4% to 43.3% (13.1% difference)
178 to 83 electors.
Jackson had a plurality of votes in 1824 but Adams and Clay had made what Jackson called a "corrupt bargain" to win the presidency. Jackson started running again immediately and won decisively.
1840 William Henry Harrison vs Martin van Buren
1,275,390 to 1,128,854 (146,536 difference)
52.9% to 46.8% (6.1% difference)
234 to 60 electors
1888 Benjamin Harrison v Grover Cleveland
5,433,892 to 5,534,438 (-100,546 difference)
47.8% to 48.6% (-0.8% difference)
233 to 168 electors
one of the 5 times the popular vote loser won the electoral college.
1892 Grover Cleveland v Benjamin Harrison v James B Weaver
5,556,918 to 5,176,108 to 1,041,028 (380,480 difference)
46% to 43% to 8.5% (3% difference)
277 to 145 to 22 electors.
Cleveland won the popular vote 3 times in a row but lost the electoral college in the middle.
1912 Woodrow Wilson v William H Taft v Theodore Roosevelt v Eugene Debs
6,296,284 to 3,486,242 to 4,122,721 to 901,551
41.8% to 23.2% to 27.4% to 6%.
435 to 8 to 88 electors
TR's selection to replace him, Taft, proved to be a normal republican and reversed many of his progressive policies, incensing TR, so he ran against him and beat him soundly. Unfortunately for him, this split the R vote and gave the election to Wilson.
1932: FDR & John Nance Garner vs Herbert Hoover & Charles Curtis
22,821,277 to 15,761,254 (7,060,023 difference)
22,821,277 to 15,761,254 (7,060,023 difference)
57.4% to 39.7% (17.7%)
472 to 59 electorsHoover presided over the start of the Great Depression and exacerbated it immensely with his misguided policies.
1976 Jimmy Carter v Gerald Ford
40,831,881 to 39,148,634 (1,683,247 difference)
50.1% to 48.0% (2.1% difference)
297 to 240 electors
Ford is the only president to have never won a national election: he was appointed to replace Agnew when he was forced to resign, and had pardoned Nixon. He proved fairly feckless as president.
1980 Ronald Reagan v Jimmy Carter v John Anderson
43,903,230 to 35,480,115 to 5,719,850 (8,423,115 difference)
50.7% to 41% to 6.6% (9.7% or 2.1% if all Anderson votes went to Carter)
489 to 49 electors
Anderson was a liberal republican, running as independent and far to the left of his historical positions. He was obviously running as a spoiler. It looks like a bigger landslide than it really was.
1992 Bill Clinton v GHW Bush v H Ross Perot
44,909,889 to 39,104,550 to 19,743,821 (5,805,339 difference)
43.0% to 37.4% to 18.9% (5.6% difference)
370 to 168 to 0 electors
Perot probably took more votes from Bush than from Clinton, but not enough to swing the election. Most of the states where Perot did well were won by Bush despite him, so there wouldn't have been much change in the electoral college. Bush was the inheritor of Reagan's legacy (and dirty tricks) but did not have the personal charm to carry it off.
2020 Joe Biden v Donald Trump
79,787,724 to 73,767,408 (6,020,316 difference) (as of 21 Nov 2020)
51.0% to 47.2% (3.8% difference)
306 to 232 electors
By far our most incompetent and corrupt president.
The biggest defeat to an incumbent was Jefferson v Adams, 22.8%. There were only 65,000 voters so a swing this large is not too unlikely. This was an incredibly dirty campaign and the two former friends were alienated for years.
The largest defeat with a statistically significant number of voters was FDR v Hoover in 1932, 17.7%.
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