Presidents’ Day Special: Small State Blues

A president has been elected from a state with less than 10 electoral votes just four times since 1789

What do former presidential candidates Jon Huntsman, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, Tom Vilsack, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Gary Bauer, Orrin Hatch, and John McCain (in 2000) have in common?

Not only did they fail to win the presidency during the last few election cycles, but they each came from states with a fairly small population.

While of course only one candidate can emerge as the winner, and many contenders hailing from big states fail each time around as well (e.g. Rick Perry in 2012), the struggles of small states to produce a president have been particularly pronounced over the last 200+ years.

A Smart Politics review of presidential elections finds that candidates from small states – those with less than 10 electoral votes – have won the presidency just four times out of 56 elections since 1789.

And just three presidential candidates have bucked this trend:

· Zachary Taylor from Louisiana in 1848 (with 6 Electoral College votes)
· Franklin Pierce from New Hampshire in 1852 (5)
· Bill Clinton from Arkansas in 1992 and 1996 (6)

While it intuitively makes sense that fewer candidates might come from these less populated states, taken collectively, the population pool of small states is quite significant: there have been 1,223 instances in which a state was allotted less than 10 electoral votes in a presidential election, compared to 908 instances for states with more than 10.

In other words, more than 57 percent of states have historically been of the “small state” variety.

But why so few presidents? Is this to be expected?

On the one hand, one can imagine that more populated states should naturally have a better chance at producing a larger number of candidates – particularly U.S. Representatives (James Garfield from Ohio) and perhaps non-politicians (e.g. Ulysses Grant from Ohio, Dwight Eisenhower from Pennsylvania).

However, candidates with these political biographies rarely win the White House.

Most presidents, in fact, have a background in the U.S. Senate or were governor of their home state, with 18 of the last 20 presidential election victors since 1932 serving in one these offices (with Eisenhower the exception).

And – no matter what the size – each state has just one governor and two U.S. Senators.

Not only have small state candidates won the White House just four times, a much larger number have been on the losing end of the general election.

Over the last 200+ years, 14 major party candidates from states with less than 10 electoral votes have lost in the general election:

· In 1824, William Crawford of Georgia (9 electoral votes)
· In 1848, Lewis Cass of Michigan (5)
· In 1852, Winfield Scott of New Jersey (7)
· In 1856, John Frémont of California (4)
· In 1864, George McClellan of New Jersey (7)
· In 1884, James Blaine of Maine (6)
· In 1896, 1900, and 1908, William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska (8)
· In 1924, John Davis of West Virginia (8)
· In 1936, Al Landon of Kansas (9)
· In 1964, Barry Goldwater of Arizona (5)
· In 1972, George McGovern of South Dakota (4)
· In 1996, Bob Dole of Kansas (6)

Overall, states with 10+ electoral votes have produced presidents at a 17.4 times greater rate (52 presidents from a base of 908 states, or 5.73 percent) than states with fewer than 10 votes (four presidents from a base of 1,223 states, or 0.33 percent).

Small states will be shut out of the White House once again in 2012 with the remaining major party candidates all coming from delegate-rich states: Barack Obama from Illinois (20), Mitt Romney from Massachusetts (11), Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania (20), Newt Gingrich from Georgia (16), and Ron Paul from Texas (38).

And although candidates from relatively sparsely populated states rarely win the presidency, hailing from the most delegate-rich state is far from a guarantee of White House success in the general election.

The candidate from the state with the most electoral votes only has a modest historical advantage over his opponent in the general election.

In the 53 elections with a challenger, the candidate from the larger state won 28 contests with the candidate from the state with fewer electoral votes winning 19 times.

In six presidential election contests the candidates came from states with the same number of electoral votes:

· In 1832, with Andrew Jackson (Tennessee) and Henry Clay (Kentucky)
· In 1904, with Teddy Roosevelt and Alton Parker (both New York)
· In 1920, with Warren Harding and James Cox (both Ohio)
· In 1940, with FDR and Wendell Wilkie (both New York)
· In 1944, with FDR and Thomas Dewey (both New York)
· In 1996, with Bill Clinton (Arkansas) and Bob Dole (Kansas)

There have been just two instances in which a winning presidential candidate failed to carry his home state: James Polk in 1844 (Tennessee) and Woodrow Wilson in 1916 (New Jersey).

Presidential Election Winners Home State Electoral Vote Tally

Year	President	State	Electoral votes
2008	Barack Obama	Illinois	21
2004	George W. Bush	Texas	34
2000	George W. Bush	Texas	32
1996	Bill Clinton	Arkansas	6
1992	Bill Clinton	Arkansas	6
1988	George Bush	Texas	29
1984	Ronald Reagan	California	47
1980	Ronald Reagan	California	45
1976	Jimmy Carter	Georgia	12
1972	Richard Nixon	California	45
1968	Richard Nixon	California	40
1964	Lyndon Johnson	Texas	25
1960	John Kennedy	Massachusetts	16
1956	Dwight Eisenhower	Pennsylvania	32
1952	Dwight Eisenhower	Pennsylvania	32
1948	Harry Truman	Missouri	15
1944	Franklin Roosevelt	New York	47
1940	Franklin Roosevelt	New York	47
1936	Franklin Roosevelt	New York	47
1932	Franklin Roosevelt	New York	47
1928	Herbert Hoover	Iowa	13
1924	Calvin Coolidge	Massachusetts	18
1920	Warren Harding	Ohio	24
1916*	Woodrow Wilson	New Jersey	14
1912	Woodrow Wilson	New Jersey	14
1908	William Taft	Ohio	23
1904	Teddy Roosevelt	New York	39
1900	William McKinley	Ohio	23
1896	William McKinley	Ohio	23
1892	Grover Cleveland	New York	36
1888	Benjamin Harrison	Indiana	15
1884	Grover Cleveland	New York	36
1880	James Garfield	Ohio	22
1876	Rutherford Hayes	Ohio	22
1872	Ulysses Grant	Ohio	22
1868	Ulysses Grant	Ohio	21
1864	Abraham Lincoln	Illinois	16
1860	Abraham Lincoln	Illinois	11
1856	James Buchanan	Pennsylvania	27
1852	Franklin Pierce	New Hampshire	5
1848	Zachary Taylor	Louisiana	6
1844*	James Polk	Tennessee	13
1840	William Harrison	Ohio	21
1836	Martin Van Buren	New York	42
1832	Andrew Jackson	Tennessee	15
1828	Andrew Jackson	Tennessee	11
1824	John Q. Adams	Massachusetts	15
1820	James Monroe	Virginia	25
1816	James Monroe	Virginia	25
1812	James Madison	Virginia	25
1808	James Madison	Virginia	24
1804	Thomas Jefferson	Virginia	24
1800	Thomas Jefferson	Virginia	21
1796	John Adams	Massachusetts	16
1792	George Washington	Virginia	21
1789	George Washington	Virginia	12

* Lost home state. Table compiled by Smart Politics.

Follow Smart Politics on Twitter.