Gerald Ford not only failed to win re-election as the US president, but … Local-level incumbents had an 89% average win rate. U.S. House Reelection Rates, 1964-2018 Senate races still overwhelmingly favor the incumbent, but not by as reliable a margin as House races. Carter beat Gerald Ford, also the incumbent, but Ford was not elected (he became president when Nixon resigned) and lost popularity because he pardoned Nixon. On its face, President Trump should have a pretty solid chance of reelection. disputes, lawsuits, and recounts, Submit a photo, survey, video, conversation, or bio, Top 10 Closest Primaries: January to June 2020. Presidential campaigns in which an incumbent is running for re-election are essentially a referendum on the president's performance in office. The incumbent win rate remained at or above 90% in all states … If President Trump fails to win reelection, he would become the first incumbent president in modern history to lose despite high ratings from voters on the U.S. economy.. (Within U.S.A.). The incumbent win rate remained at or above 90% in all states but California, New Hampshire, Ohio, and West Virginia. Two cases in a century and two decades. Concentration Camps for Uighurs Reflect China’s “Different Norms,” Says Biden, Dr. Fauci’s Refusal to Face New York Nursing Home Deaths Is Revealing. (CNN)With the 2020 presidential election less than a week away, the prospect once more looms of a challenger unseating an entrenched incumbent president. HOWARD: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer, ELEVEN PRESIDENTS: Promises vs. It would appear that the unemployment rate had little to do with Reagan's landslide victory over Carter, as the rate of unemployment improved over Carter's presidency. … Every incumbent after that (Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, and Coolidge) won reelection until Hoover’s loss. SELECT A CYCLE … Thirty-eight states had a 100% win rate in congressional races. John Adams (1797-1801) John Adams, the nation's first vice president and second president, failed … In the 2020 general election, 93% of incumbents nationwide won their re-election bids. “So true!” he tweeted. Obama went down by three and a half million votes between 2008 and 2012, but still won comfortably.” President Trump reacted to Basham’s Fox segment, seemingly citing it as further ‘evidence’ of his supposed win. Take note that some of the lowest re-election rates occur in the midterm … In the 2018 general election, an average of 92 percent of incumbents nationwide won their re-election bids. The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.9% in September, from 8.4% in August, a big drop that in normal times would be welcome news for a presidential incumbent seeking reelection in just over a month. He’s the second incumbent in my count not to be reelected. He would have been reelected were it not for Perot’s strong campaign. Based on Gallup’s presidential approval tracker, Ford, Carter and George H.W. Let’s consider presidential reelection rates back to the beginning of the twentieth century. An incumbent president has not lost reelection in decades. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. The last time an incumbent president lost reelection -- George H.W. Big swings in the national mood can sometimes topple long time office-holders, as happened with the Reagan revolution in 1980. Bush was … Bush, in 1992 -- an "it's the economy, stupid" campaign theme took him down. Ford had replaced Nixon, who resigned from office, and was never elected. In the 2020 general election, 93% of incumbents nationwide won their re-election bids. So I’m counting Ford as a special case too. In 1980, he was the defeated incumbent president. Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. Incumbents almost always win. So there’s my count. He’s an interesting case because he could have run again but didn’t. This content is part of Ballotpedia's analysis of the 2020 elections. “No incumbent president has ever lost a reelection bid if he's increased his votes [total]. Most recently, Presidents Obama, Bush (the second), and Clinton were reelected. For example, in an election for president, the incumbent is the person holding or acting in the office of president before the election, whether seeking re-election or not. Congressional incumbents had a 96% win rate. “Since World War II, on average 93.3 percent of all incumbent representatives and 81.5 percent of all incumbent senators running for reelection have been returned for office.” [note 4] And because they can benefit from various forms of soft corruption, they do not need to leave, even in the unlikely event that they are defeated for re-election. State-level incumbents had a 95% win rate. In a recent post on The Beacon, I predicted that President Trump would be reelected in November, because he is the incumbent, and incumbents almost always win. This survey shows the Job approval ratings of incumbent U.S. presidents seeking re-election from 1964 to 2012. Ballotpedia covered all state races on November 3, 2020, as well as local elections in America's 100 largest cities by population. • Gerald Ford: Carter beat Ford four years earlier in 1976. The first George Bush lost his reelection bid, but I’m calling that a special circumstance because third-party candidate Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote, and most of those votes would have gone to Bush. The table below shows the win rate for each state and election type: !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); if(document.getElementsByClassName("reference").length==0) if(document.getElementById('Footnotes')!==null) document.getElementById('Footnotes').parentNode.style.display = 'none'; Communications: Kristen Vonasek • Kayla Harris • Megan Brown • Mary Dunne • Sarah Groat • Heidi Jung • Lauren Nemerovski This is especially true of Representatives. No Republican president has ever been reelected with less than 50 percent of the vote. He chose not to, perhaps thinking that the advantage of incumbency would not be sufficient to overcome his unpopularity. REALLY GOOD SCHOOLS: Global Lessons for High-Caliber, Low-Cost Education, HOT TALK, COLD SCIENCE (Revised and Expanded Third Edition), NEW WAY TO CARE: Social Protections that Put Families First, IN ALL FAIRNESS: Equality, Liberty, and the Quest for Human Dignity, LIBERTY IN PERIL: Democracy and Power in American History, RESTORING THE PROMISE: Higher Education in America, GUN CONTROL IN NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE: Tyranny and Resistance, T.R.M. Reagan won re-election by 18 points in 1984, suggesting that he had quite a bit of slack. The Rising Incumbent Reelection Rate: What™s Gerrymandering Got to Do With It? That's one of the reasons re-election rates are so high — incumbents generally don't have to work as hard to get their name and message out. Will Cuba’s Vaccine Rollout Live Up to the Ad Copy? If Democratic candidate Joe … Indeed, there has been a noticeable upward trend in incumbent reelection rates over the last half century (see Figure 1). This percentage includes races in which incumbents ran unopposed but does not include recall elections. He thus became the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms, and is known as both the 22nd and 24th president. In 1976, Jimmy Carter defeated an incumbent president. In just one state, Mississippi, 100 percent of incumbents held their seats. In the case of … President Reagan was re-elected, but he defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter to ascend to the presidency, so Carter is an incumbent who was not reelected. Three presidents in recent times, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Only two incumbents—Hoover and Carter—failed to win reelection. For comprehensive election results, click here. ... Election Year Defeated President Defeated ... After he was defeated in 1888 for re-election by Benjamin Harrison, he came back four years later to toss Harrison out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In a recent post on The Beacon, I predicted that President Trump would be reelected in November, because he is the incumbent, and incumbents almost always win.Here are incumbent reelection rates for the Senate and House of Representatives, but how about the presidency?.