Welcome to a new (ir)regular series, “Back of the Napkin”: a quick-and-dirty look into data and trends on a variety of topics (albeit mostly related to politics and current events).  As the name implies, this series will be less rigorous statistical analysis and more what you get when you have a bit of spare time and a spreadsheet, but I think it can still provide some basic insight and a jumping off point for interesting discussion.

With the intro out of the way, let’s get into it.  Today’s topic is: Presidential Popularity Contests.

As has been pointed out by many people, the winner of presidential contests in the US is never actually the choice of the majority, as turnout and difference of opinion mean that the most a candidate can ever hope to achieve is the support of a plurality of the people they hope to govern.  With the recent election and inauguration in mind, I thought it might be interesting to look at the actual support (as a share of the electorate) that US presidents have been able to attract.  Caveat: I pulled the underlying data from Wikipedia (so apply salt as needed), since that had all the data I needed in one place, but I did spot check a few elections and it seemed close enough for the purpose of this piece (within a few points).  Turnout is of course an estimate, so that’s where the greatest discrepancy may occur.  I took turnout multiplied by vote share received to calculate level of support among the electorate for each presidential candidate. The results are as follows:

Interestingly, the greatest level of turnout in US history happened in the mid to late 19th century.  Granted, the US did not have universal suffrage then, but even so the turnout levels are consistently above what most subsets of the population achieve today.  Consequently, the most popular presidents in US history come from this time frame.  Ironically, if these numbers are correct, the president with the highest level of support was William Henry Harrison (1840 – 42.4% of the electorate), the man most famous for delivering the longest inaugural address and having the shortest tenure, dying after about a month in office.  The person with the second highest level of support was Samuel Tilden (1876 – 41.6%), who had the election basically stolen from him by electoral and congressional shenanigans.  The president with the third highest level of support, making him the most popular president to serve a full term, was U. S. Grant (1868 – 41.2%), who was infamous for his bad decision making when appointing cabinet members, who ran a thoroughly corrupt administration.  Fourth and fifth place go to Abraham Lincoln (1864 – 40.6%) and William McKinley (1896 – 40.4%), both of whom were assassinated early in their second term.  No president has broken 40% since McKinley, and overall turnout dropped, never to recover, after McKinley.  Given the results of the leader-board, it may not be unfair to conclude that a segment of the electorate decided that their vote didn’t make much difference and consequently dropped out of the process.

Turning to more recent events, the past election (2020) showed the highest turnout since universal suffrage was instated (de jure if not de facto) in 1920, and in fact if preliminary estimates are correct it was the highest turnout since McKinley.  The high turnout probably explains why this election bucked so many trends.  Trump’s rallies did presage a high level of popularity – comparing presidents in the era of universal suffrage, the only Republicans to attract more support than Trump (2020 – 31.3%) were Ronald Reagan (1984 – 31.3%), Richard Nixon (1972 – 33.5%), Dwight Eisenhower (1952 – 34.9% and 1956 – 34.8%), and Herbert Hoover (1928 – 33.1%).  This probably bodes ill for the wing of the Republican party that wants to be rid of Trump and his influence, as he’s clearly popular, more popular than the establishment types that preceded him.  Of course, as opinion polls presaged, Trump also had a high level of unpopularity, resulting in Biden (2020 – 34.2%), who I think it is safe to say ran as more of a “no to him” than “yes to me” candidate, attracting greater support than any Democrat since LBJ (1964 – 37.8%), who coincidentally also ran a heavily negative campaign against his opponent.  The only other Democrat in the era of universal suffrage to pull in more support than Biden was FDR (1936 – 37.1%).  Also of note, the 2020 election was only the second time in the era of universal suffrage that both major candidates managed to attract more than 30% of the electorate, the first time being the hotly contested (and possibly stolen) election of 1960, between JFK (31.2%) and Nixon (31.1%).  As if it weren’t already clear, this data indicates that we live in polarizing times.

Assorted Trivia:

  • Both Biden (34.2%) and Trump (31.3%) attracted more support than Obama (2008 – 30.8%).
  • The president with the least popular support was George Washington (1792 – 6.3%).  Of course some states didn’t let people vote for president yet and no one was running against him, so why bother showing up to the polls?
  • Barry Goldwater (1964 – 23.8%), who suffered one of the worst margins of defeat in electoral history, managed to pull more support than George H. W. Bush (1992 – 20.6%) and Bob Dole (1996 – 19.9%), which is funny considering the 90s is when the Republican party managed to recapture Congress for the first time in 40 years.  “Stupid Party” is a worthy epithet.  Perhaps they should have run Goldwater again?
  • The only time a third party candidate managed to get more support than one of the two major parties was when they ran someone who had previously been elected president (Theodore Roosevelt, 1912).  The implications for breaking the duopoly are rather dismal.  Although, this does mean the Libertarian Party has two possible candidates if they want a shot at winning in 2024…
  • Non-voters of the world, unite!  Due to high turnout, Biden (34.2%) was the first president since Theodore Roosevelt (1904 – 36.8%) to be elected with more support than the non-voting option (33.3% in 2020, 34.8% in 1904).  That’s right, every single president from Taft to Trump was less popular than staying home on election day.

If anyone notices any other interesting trends or factoids in the data, let me know.  I’m interested to hear what you think.