Consecutive Incumbent U.S. Presidential Elections

I recently published an article on the success rate of the older vs the younger candidate in every presidential election going back to 1824. That post includes my chart of all the elections in the sample. As part of that project, I made a distinction between elections involving incumbents in order to see whether the statistics in non-incumbent races were different (bearing in mind that (A) incumbents are more likely to be older than first time candidates and (B) incumbents win more often than not). This inspired a new article – less a presidential election research project and more an article built on a fun bit of election trivia: What is the record for the most consecutive presidential elections involving an incumbent president?

The Two-Term Tradition and Amendment

Today, presidents are limited to two four-year terms. However, this was not the case for most of American history. The 22nd Amendment, which codified the formal two-year term limit, was ratified on February 27, 1951. The first president to which it applied was the 34th President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who took office on January 20, 1953. (Note: A president who serves less than half a term can still win two full terms – this the reason why Lyndon B. Johnson, who succeeded John F. Kennedy after the latter’s murder and won a term in his own right, was still eligible to run for a second full term in 1968 had he chosen to do so). However, students of American history will know that the 22nd Amendment effectively enshrined what had been the general practice of presidents beginning with the first president, George Washington, who declined to seek a third term he would have been certain to win without any meaningful opposition after having only reluctantly served a second. Following Washington, Presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson all served two full terms and never sought a third. The first two-term president to try to break the mold was Ulysses S. Grant, who won the 1868 and 1872 elections and served two full terms before running again in 1880 and narrowly losing the Republican nomination to James A. Garfield. We saw a qualified second attempt to go against tradition in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt, who had served the better part of William McKinley’s second term after the latter’s murder before winning his own 4-year term in 1904, unsuccessfully attempted to win a second full term in 1912 (like Grant, four years removed from leaving office). There may have been something in the family, however. Theodore Roosevelt and Grant were fourth cousins twice removed. It would be Theodore Roosevelt’s closer cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would shatter the two-term limit, running for and winning a third term in 1940 and then winning a fourth term that he would not complete due to his own death in 1944.

How Can We Have Consecutive Presidential Elections Involving Incumbents?

Franklin Roosevelt was, and will remain thanks to the 22nd Amendment, the only president to run for a third (much less fourth) consecutive term. Thus, outside of that one case, we know that we have not had any other consecutive elections involving the same incumbent since no two-term incumbent (as in an incumbent who won two consecutive elections) other than Franklin Roosevelt. With that scenario dealt with, let us look at the most usual scenarios that lead to consecutive incumbent elections.

• An incumbent runs for a second term and is defeated. The new president who unseated the incumbent in the prior election then runs for re-election as incumbent
• A president who won his previous election as an incumbent dies in office and his successor then runs as the incumbent in the next election.

Regarding the second scenario, I note as a threshold matter that there has been no case in which someone who became president after being elevated from vice president upon the death (or in the case of Ford succeeding Nixon, resignation) of his successor both (A) won a full term in his own right and (2) was then a general election candidate for a second consecutive full term. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson both briefly attempted to win a second full term after having initially been ascended to the presidency upon the deaths of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy respectively, but abandoned their re-election campaigns during the primary process. Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge would have all but certainly second full terms in 1908 and 1928 respectively after having first become president upon elevation from the vice presidency, but both declined the opportunity (Roosevelt, as we know, came to regret that decision; Coolidge declined with no apparent regrets and, notably unlike Roosevelt, would have been eligible for a second third term even under the rules later set forth by the 22nd Amendment because he had served less than half of his predecessor Warren G. Harding’s term)

Historical Instances of Consecutive Presidential Elections Involving Incumbents

Before listing every instance of consecutive incumbent elections, we must carefully define incumbent elections. I am defining the term to include only those elections where the incumbent was the general election candidate of a major party. I will not count any case where an incumbent informally or formally for a time sought his party’s nomination but ultimately did not obtain it.

With our rules set and our introduction complete, I now list every instance wherein we had at least two consecutive U.S. Presidential elections involving an incumbent.

• 1800 and 1804: John Adams (1800); Thomas Jefferson (1804)
  In 1800, Thomas Jefferson defeated the incumbent president, John Adams, under circumstances that were so messy that the States and Congress saw fit to expeditiously fix the presidential election system with a new amendment. Jefferson then sought, and easily won, re-election in 1804.
• 1828 and 1832: John Quincy Adams (1828); Andrew Jackson (1832)
  In 1828, John Quincy Adams became the second incumbent president, following his father, to lose a re-election bid. Like his father, he also lost in a rematch – here to Andrew Jackson instead of Thomas Jefferson. Jackson, like Jefferson, ran for and won a second consecutive term.
• 1888 and 1892: Grover Cleveland (1888); Benjamin Harrison (1892)
  This is a historically unique scenario. In 1888, President Grover Cleveland sought a second consecutive term, but was defeated by Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland returned four years later and defeated the then-incumbent President Harrison in a re-match. We were slated to repeat this odd scenario in 2024 wherein former president Donald Trump was defeated in his second-term bid by Joe Biden in 2020 before returning for a re-match in 2024, but Mr. Biden withdrew from the race after having secured the requisite delegates for re-nomination.
• 1900 and 1904: William McKinley (1900); Theodore Roosevelt (1904)
  William McKinley ran for and won a second term in 1900. He was assassinated during his second term, whereupon he was succeeded by the vice president, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt won his own term as incumbent in 1904. As I discussed earlier, Roosevelt weighed running again in 1908 but decided against it.
• 1912 and 1916: William Howard Taft (1912); Woodrow Wilson (1916)
  Theodore Roosevelt’s handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, won the 1908 election. Taft ran as incumbent in 1912 but came in third behind Roosevelt and the election winner, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson ran for and very narrowly won re-election as incumbent in 1916. Roosevelt had challenged Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912, and had he secured it instead of losing and then running third-party, this consecutive incumbent election streak would have likely not occurred.
• 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, and 1948: Herbert Hoover (1932); Franklin D. Roosevelt (1936, 1940, and 1944); Harry Truman (1948)
  After having never seen more than two consecutive incumbent elections, we had a record streak of five in a row from 1932 through 1948. After Calvin Coolidge declined to run for a second full term in 1928, Herbert Hoover, who had been Secretary of Commerce under both Harding and Coolidge, won the presidential election. In 1932, Hoover lost in a historic landslide as incumbent to Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt was easily re-elected in 1936 and then broke the two-term barrier not once, but twice, winning as incumbent in both 1940 and 1944. Roosevelt died very early in his fourth term and was succeeded by the vice president, Harry Truman. Truman ran for his own full term as incumbent in 1948 and won what was considered to be an upset victory in 1948. Truman initially had ambitions on running for a second full term (he was explicitly not covered by the 22nd Amendment), but he ultimately withdrew from the 1952 race early in the primary season, ending the long incumbent election streak.
• 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1984: Richard Nixon (1972); Gerald Ford (1976); Jimmy Carter (1980); Ronald Reagan (1984)
  The 22nd Amendment did not stop us from having our second, and to date last, streak of more than two consecutive incumbent elections. After winning the presidency in 1968, Richard Nixon ran for and won a second term as incumbent in a landslide in 1972. Nixon resigned and was succeeded by unelected vice president, Gerald Ford. Ford narrowly survived a rare sitting president primary challenge brought by Ronald Reagan in 1976 before narrowly losing his incumbent bid to Jimmy Carter in the general election. In 1980, Reagan secured the Republican nomination and then defeated Carter, who followed Ford in overcoming a difficult (albeit less close) primary challenge, by a wide margin in the general election. Reagan was re-elected even more decisively in 1984. Unlike Truman in 1952, Reagan was not eligible to run for a third term (not that he would have), so the incumbent election streak ended at four.
• 1992 and 1996: George H.W. Bush (1992); Bill Clinton (1996)
  In 1988, George H.W. Bush became the first incumbent vice president to win a presidential election since Martin Van Buren 152 years earlier. However, he was unable to replicate the two-term success of his predecessor, accruing only 37% of the votes in a decisive re-election loss to Bill Clinton. Clinton went on to win a second term in 1996 as the incumbent. Just to tie things together, Clinton defeated Bob Dole in the 1996 general election. Dole had been Gerald Ford’s running-mate in 1976, the second link in what was then the most recent incumbent election streak.

We have had two consecutive incumbent elections on five occasions and four and five on one each. While consecutive incumbent elections are relatively uncommon, the scenarios in which two in a row occur are straight-forward. Longer streaks have required some unusual events.

Three things made the 1932-1948 streak possible:

1. Calvin Coolidge declined to run for re-election in 1928. Had he won, he would have almost certainly won and almost certainly have not run for a third full term in 1932.
2. Franklin Roosevelt ran for and won unprecedented third and fourth consecutive terms.
3. Roosevelt died during his fourth term, paving the way for Harry Truman to run as incumbent in 1948. Had Roosevelt survived his fourth term, it seems exceedingly unlikely given his health and the end of World War II that he would have run for a fifth.

As I noted, Truman did consider making it six incumbent elections in a role, but the political environment made him ultimately pass on a re-election bid.

The 1972-84 streak relied on similarly unusual events:

1. Richard Nixon became the first and only president to resign while in office, doing so after having won re-election as an incumbent.
2. Gerald Ford narrowly survived a primary challenge, which was necessary to keep the incumbent election streak going since my criteria requires the incumbent to have participated in the general election, and then lost his re-election bid. Had Ford won in 1976, he would not have been eligible to run for re-election in 1980 (even if he were so inclined) due to his having served more than half of Nixon’s second term.
3. Jimmy Carter, like Ford, won a competitive primary as incumbent against then Senator Ted Kennedy (albeit Ford came much closer to losing to Reagan in 1976 than did Carter to Kennedy in 1980). This extended the incumbent election to three. Carter then lost to Reagan, who survived a serious assassination attempt in his first term before extending the incumbent election streak to four in 1984. Reagan’s victory in 1984 and his serving out his term ensured that the record of five consecutive incumbent elections from 1932-1948 would stand.
4. It is worth noting that it is very rare for incumbents to lose in back-to-back elections. This had only previously happened in 1800 and 1804 and then again in 1888 and 1892. That we had consecutive incumbent losses – even granting that Ford was a unique incumbent candidate – was an anomaly in and of itself.

The easiest way for there to be a consecutive incumbent election is for an incumbent president to lose. However, as I noted in my presidential candidate age study, incumbents usually win. An incumbent president has been the nominee of his party in 31 elections and the incumbent has won 20 of those, giving incumbents a 64.5% success rate. If we exclude Franklin Roosevelt’s third and fourth term bids since those are historical anomalies (that leaves us at 18/29 for a 62.1% incumbent success rate), we are left with 18 elections where the incumbent’s re-election victory either precluded or stopped an incumbent election streak.

In most cases, the defeat of an incumbent leads to consecutive incumbent elections (see incumbent defeats in 1800, 1828, 1888, 1912, 1932, 1976, 1980, and 1992). However, there are a few exceptions. In 1840, William Henry Harrison defeated the incumbent president, Martin Van Buren, in what was a re-match of the 1836 election which went the other way. However, Harrison died shortly after taking office. Harrison and his vice president, John Tyler, were both members of the Whig Party. The Whigs expelled Tyler from the party during Tyler’s presidency, and thus we should not be surprised that Tyler was not nominated to seek his own full term in 1844. 1892 is an odd case – Grover Cleveland had defeated the incumbent Benjamin Harrison, but that was only after Harrison had defeated the incumbent Cleveland in 1888. Nevertheless, Cleveland could have by all rights sought re-election in 1896 and tried to become the first man to serve more than two terms. Finally, as I noted at the top, Joe Biden will not be his party’s nominee for re-election, which eliminates what would have been an incumbent election streak since he had defeated the incumbent Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

The death (or in Richard Nixon’s case, resignation) of a president in office who had won as incumbent has a tendency to lead to consecutive incumbent elections, but this is not a given. The 1900/1904 streak would have almost certainly not occurred had William McKinley survived his second term. The 1932-1948 streak was most likely extended by one election due to the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. Finally, 1976 would not have been a second consecutive incumbent election but for the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. But we do have one case of an incumbent president not completing his term which did not lead to consecutive incumbent elections. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 after winning re-election, but his successor, Andrew Johnson, was then not a candidate in 1868. (Lincoln was a Republican while Johnson was a Democrat. They won on a National Union ticket in 1864, but the parties had reverted to form by 1868 and Johnson sought the Democratic nomination.)

Finally, we were possibly denied a few consecutive incumbent streaks by some peculiar trends in nineteenth century presidential elections wherein first term presidents, for one reason or another, were not candidates in the next election. With one exception – none of these directly prevented a consecutive incumbent election streak, but we would have likely had more instances of consecutive incumbent elections had there been more elections in the 19th century with incumbents running. James K. Polk, James Buchanan, and Rutherford B. Hayes did not seek re-election in 1844, 1860, and 1880 respectively after having run on, and held to, one-term pledges. In 1856, Franklin Pierce was denied the opportunity to seek a second term when the Democrats opted to nominate Buchanan instead (this remains the only instance of an elected president losing a nomination battle at the Convention). On four occasions, incumbent presidents who had been elevated from the vice presidency were not nominated in the subsequent election – John Tyler in 1844, Millard Fillmore in 1852, Andrew Johnson in 1868, and Chester Arthur in 1884. Had Johnson been nominated in 1868, we would have had a consecutive incumbent election streak since Abraham Lincoln had run and won as the incumbent in 1864.

We are unlikely to see consecutive incumbent elections in the immediate future. 2024 was set to be one following 2020, but now it is not. In the event Mr. Trump wins and serves out his term, both 2028 and 2032 will be off the consecutive incumbent radar since he would be precluded from running for another term having already served a full term from 2017-2021. If Kamala Harris wins, that would create the possibility of a consecutive incumbent election in 2032 pending the results of the 2028 election.