Fun Facts About The Presidential Election

The 1st official presidential election in the U.S took place in 1789 with George Washington becoming the 1st President. Only 10 of the 13 states participated in the election, as N.Y had chosen no electors, and N.C & R.I had not yet ratified the Constitution.

The Anti-Masonic Party was the first to hold an official party convention to nominate candidates for the president and vice-president in 1832. Such conventions are now part of the standard process for the Republican and Democratic parties.

Prior to the 12th Amendment of the Constitution in 1804, the Presidential candidate who received the second highest number of electoral votes was named the vicepresident. The amendment mandated that electors vote for the offices of president and vice-president separately.

The oldest presidential candidate to be elected was Ronald Reagan at age 69, while the youngest candidate to be elected was John F. Kennedy at age 43. If elected in the 2008 election, John McCain would have taken over the title of oldest elected president at age 72.

In the 1984 presidential election, Ronald Reagan received both the highest number of popular votes (54,455,075) and the highest number of electoral votes (525) in the history of U.S. presidential elections. These numbers have yet to be surpassed by another presidential candidate.

Grover Cleveland is the only candidate ever to be elected to one term, defeated for a second term, and then elected again four years later. Thus, he became both the 22nd president and the 24th president.

Norman Thomas of the Socialist Party goes down in history as the only candidate to run for president six times; he was never elected.

The 1960 presidential election holds the title of the closet presidential race. John F. Kennedy won just a tenth of a percent more popular votes than Richard Nixon, but he did carry a clear majority in the Electoral College with 303 votes, as opposed to Nixons 219 votes.

The 1st general election presidential debate was held on Sep 26, 1960, between John F. Kennedy, candidate for the Democratic Party, and Richard Nixon, nominee for the Republicans. Prior to this election, presidential candidates occasionally debated, but not in an official mannerand not on T.V.

Four times in the history of presidential elections, the candidate who won the most popular votes has not been elected president. This occurred in the 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000 elections.

The presidential election is traditionally held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. November was chosen as the election month because it was a convenient time for farmers when the weather was still nice enough to travel to the county seat and the bulk of their harvest chores were finished. The Tuesday after the first Monday was chosen to prevent the election from ever falling on the first day of the month and to to avoid travel on Sunday. It was preferred that the election not be held on the first day of the month, as many business owners completed their accounting for the previous month on that day, and a poor business month could affect the vote of these owners.

Voter participation in presidential elections has fallen in the last four decades from an average of nearly 62% of registered voters participating in 1960s elections to an average of just over 54% for the 2000s elections

The president officially enters office on January 20th during a formal inauguration ceremony. Prior to a Constitutional amendment in 1933, the inauguration ceremony was held on March 4th, to allow enough time for election results to be collected and the winning candidate to travel to Washington, D.C.

The 2008 presidential election was the first time in U.S. election history when two sitting senators ran against each other for president. From this election, Barack Obama became just the third sitting senator ever elected.

Only two women have ever won the nomination of a major party in a U.S. presidential election: Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic vicepresidential nominee in 1984, and Sarah Palin was the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee.

The 2008 presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, were the only two presidential candidates to be born outside of the continental U.S. Obama was born in Hawaii, and McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, a U.S. naval base. A bipartisan legal review agreed that McCain was a natural-born citizen and thus eligible to run for president.

Every US President since 1852 has been either a Republican or a Democrat

The Constitution did not originally contain presidential term limits. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, restricted presidents to a maximum of two terms. Four-time president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932, 1936, 1940, 1944) was the only candidate to be elected more than twice.

Eight US Presidents have died while in office. Four were assassinated (John F. Kennedy, William McKinley, James Garfield, and Abraham Lincoln) and four died of natural causes (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding, Zachary Taylor, and William Henry Harrison).

Democrats first used the donkey as a party symbol when Andrew Jackson ran for president in 1828. Thomas Nast, a famous political cartoonist, later popularized the symbol in an 1870 Harper's Weekly political cartoon featuring the Democratic donkey kicking an elephant, which became the symbol of the Republican party. Before the 2012 election campaign began, the Democratic Party released a new symbol - a blue "D" inside a circle.

The Republican Party has been known as the "G.O.P." which today is a reference to "Grand Old Party"; but in 1875, when the term was first used, G.O.P. referenced "Gallant Old Party."

The tallest U.S. President was Abraham Lincoln at 6'4" The shortest U.S. President was James Madison at 5'4 James Buchanan is the only bachelor to be elected president. Ronald Reagan is the only divorced man to be elected president.

The U.S. Marine band has played at every presidential inauguration since 1801.