| Had Henry Clay's Whig running-mate in 1844, Theodore Frelinghuysen, somehow ascended to the Presidency, he would have filled the 13-letter category.
When the www.Politics1.com blog discussed a couple of years ago which major-party presidential ticket would have the most letters (Ford-Dole and Dole-Kemp were among the shortest) or make the longest bumper sticker, we found that despite the shortness of Clay's name Clay-Freylinghuysen (Whig, 1844), at 17 letters, would match Stevenson-Sparkman (D, 1952) and Stevenson-Kefauver (D, 1956) at the top.
There was a theory that generally held good between roughly 1880 and 1960 that if presidential candidates' names were of different lengths, then the one with the longer name would win. This predictor, and the contrary one (that the shorter name always wins) have both had to go in recent elections.
1880 Garfield beat Hancock; 1884 Cleveland beat Blaine; 1896 & 1900 McKinley beat Bryan; 1904 Roosevelt beat Parker; 1908 (exception) Taft beat Bryan; 1912 Wilson beat Taft (but also Roosevelt); 1920 Harding beat Cox; 1924 Coolidge beat Davis; 1928 Hoover beat Smith; 1932-44 Roosevelt beat Hoover, Landon, Willkie & Dewey; 1948 Truman beat Dewey; 1952-56 Eisenhower beat Stevenson; 1960 Kennedy beat Nixon.
LBJ & Nixon defeated longer names, but then Carter beat Ford, Bush beat Dukakis, Clinton beat Bush & Dole, Bush beat Kerry and Obama beat McCain, i.e. no discernible pattern (equal length contests omitted). |
Common US Presidents' First Names
US Presidents in Reverse
One President Per Letter
