Losing U.S. Presidential Candidates

Completing the top entry of this quiz has given me a certain sense of closure on the 2012 election. Good luck to us all in the next four years.

Four years later and back for another round. We survived the last 4 years, so I suppose we'll make it out alive this time around too. See you in 4 more years!

4 Years Later and... wait lemme get my time machine.

How did only 98% of people get romney?

He's just that forgettable.

I got most back to 1960, and the first few, plus most that ran unsuccessfully for a 2nd term or had an unsuccessful 1st bid before they won. I also got Al Smith just on a complete guess, whoever that is, when I was typing in random common names.

Al Smith was the first Catholic nominated by one of the major parties. Obviously not the first winner (Kennedy).

Learned more about Smith a couple days ago watching a documentary on the Gilded Age.

Do you remember the name of the losing candidate of last year's elections in Japan? In China? Germany?

Japan has upwards of 127 million residents. I suspect they do a bit of caring about who leads their country.

@Aesthus im pretty sure hes just messing around by the way he typed "USA USA USA" but again it is all about the USA USA USA

There aren't many elections in China.

Germany: Schulz, Steinmeier, Steinbrück, Schröder, Stoiber (S seems to be unlucky) and everyone back to 1949. France: Le Pen jr., Sarkozy, Royal, Le Pen sr. UK: Corbyn, Corbyn, Milliband, Brown. It's good to know at least some of these names, and I'd like to get better at it. Japan: no idea, China: I don't think there's a losing candidate there.

Clinton? Most successful first lady ever? She's the one who was cheated on while in office. Kind of an interesting choice there, bud.

That has no bearing on her accomplishments as First Lady, which were significant by the standards of the role. FDR died while he was president. That doesn't mean he wasn't a good one.

Clinton's more likely to be remembered as the first woman who got the closest to being elected President.

Henry Clay, most accomplished loser in presidential history. I remember learning about him in 10th grade history.

You mean loser who didn't end up winning eventually I expect...Henry Clay is an accomplished political figure, but he doesn't rank above John Adams or Thomas Jefferson I would think. As for Adams, I believe that at the time he ran for President he was, and still stands as, the most accomplished person ever to be elected President for the 1st time. He had been the driving force at the Continental Congress in declaring Independence, had gone to Paris and then to Amsterdam to negotiate alliances and was a signatory and negotiator of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, served as the 1st US Ambassador to Great Britain, and was then of course the first Vice President. With all of that to his credit, I would put Adams still to this day as the most qualified man ever elected President. Both he, Jefferson, and some others on the list who were Presidents before or after they lost, are also more accomplished than Clay.

yes, I meant that Clay was a loser in that he repeatedly ran and lost and never actually won. He was much better at losing presidential races than almost anyone unless you want to count people like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or Lyndon LaRouche.. but they were never serious contenders.

Of course Clay's accomplishments didn't even come close to matching Adams' or Jefferson's or Roosevelt's, who all later won.

Stassen falls into the "not a serious contender" category. Like Charles R. Doty.

William Jennings Bryan was another one who was always running and losing. I remember learning about him, as well. He's tied with Clay here for most appearances. Though Clay's career of losing elections was longer than Bryan's. He was at it for 20+ years.

Based on what I learned in history class, the biggest injustice to the office of the president was the fact that neither Henry Clay nor William Jennings Bryan held office. Both would have been more competent than the presidents that we had during that time. Perhaps we wouldn't have had a depression in the mid 1800s had Clay been there. Maybe we would have actually had a competent president at the turn of the century instead of a revolving door of one-term buffoons if Bryan took office. Who knows.

William Jennings Bryan

John Scopes monkey trial

(look up)

Why the picture of Dewey, just out of curiosity?

When the Republicans nominated him in 1944 Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that he looked like the little man on the top of the wedding cake. And the Chicago Tribune prematurely declared him the winner in 1948, which might cement his role in history as the man who finished second. The Trib still hasn't gotten over it: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/chi-chicagodays-deweydefeats-story-story.html. It probably never will.

Several copies of Newsweek's "Madam President" issue were sold before sales were stopped and the remaining ones recalled. The President Trump issue will be shipped next week. Oops. http://nypost.com/2016/11/09/national-recall-after-newsweek-misfires-with-clinton-cover/

Everyone seems to know about DeWitt Clinton in 1812 now. Is this the luckiest Jetpunk type-in ever?

Interesting to see the 2012 comments at the last election. Just finished US election and Donald Trump is president. Will be interesting to say the least.

Oh those Gremlins! (Laugh Track)

Typing "Harison" with one R gets just William, and not Benjamin. Same thing happens on the US Presidents quiz.

However, I don't think he won the necessary popular vote % to appear on here. I agree with you, and would include him, considering that the electoral vote is how the President is decided. Thurmond was infinitely closer to the Presidency in the end than someone like Perot who won literally millions of votes, but no electors to show for it.

I thought that Aaron Burr tied with Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1800.

Same. I also tried to enter his name.

Not quite. Elections worked a little differently back then. Of the 16 states in the 1800 election, only 6 (KY, MD, NC, RI, TN, VA) used a system that could be considered a popular vote, but even then the ability to vote was tied to property ownership, and varied from state to state.

Whether by popular vote or not, each State chose electors who would basically vote by party. This resulted in the Electoral College that year being made up of 73 Democratic-Republicans vs 65 Federalists.

The rules at the time (pre 12th Amendment) for choosing who was President vs Vice President from the winning party came down to the 2 votes that each Elector cast. Each Elector from the Federalist party that year cast one vote for Adams and all but one cast their second vote for Pinckney, the final vote going to John Jay. If the Federalists had won, this would have resulted in Adams as President with Pinckney as VP.

The D/R party was supposed to have employed a similar strategy, with one Elector not voting for Burr, but for whatever reason that didn't happen. This caused the tie in the Electoral College that needed to be resolved by multiple rounds of voting in the House of Representatives. So although that decision did end up being Jefferson over Burr, they were both on the winning side of the Presidential Election.

Poor old Eugene Debs never made 10%

I guessed him as well haha

I managed to be the one dummy who didn't get DeWitt Clinton...

Press F to pay respects to Horace Greely, the only candidate to have died during an election process.

F

F What about Edward and Robert Kennedy? Didn't they die during primaries?

Interestingly enough, Strom Thurmond earned about 2% of the vote in 1948, yet still won the electoral vote in 4 Southern States. Rules of the quiz didn't admit him, and rightfully so, but I tried him anyway, to no avail.

aaron burr?

poor william jennings bryan and henry clay..

Clinton, Ford, Douglas, Hughes and many more (if you pay) don't have to lose: change history and make them win here!

Everything back to 1944, then not much - mainly just the presidents who had failed runs for office before winning or lost office.

I wasn't aware that ALF ran for president in the 30s before doing his sitcom.

Please accept "follette" for Bob La Follette. Thanks!

would love to see this quiz combined with the US Presidents and their Vice Presidents. What a grand historical quiz that would be!

47/58

Popcorn for anyone who came to see the inevitable cesspool of a comment section 🍿

Not gonna be much of a cesspool left when the comments get deleted.

Thank you, thank you. I actually avoided this quiz for the last week or so because I like to read the comments, yet inevitably they descend into they typical mudslinging you see everywhere else (full disclosure: I'm guilty of throwing a few barbs of my own in the past). So I just stayed away but happy to see this moderation update.

I'm sure you've heard this a bunch of times, but Jetpunk could really use a commenting system that allows you to be notified when someone responds to one of your comments. Not the ones that require you to be on Facebook or something else, but would be nice.

You forgot Kanye!

the only reason "DeWitt Clinton" has so many is cause people type in Clinton

Anyone who watched Hamilton: Ummm Burr?

Burr ran as Jefferson's VP

will be on monday tho

54/58!

Came to the comments expecting debate and anti-Trump and anti-Biden sentiment, didn't expect absolutely no debate whatsoever! If you deleted the comments of some users who are very vocal about their opinions, thank you Quizmaster!

why would you come looking for something that you don't want to see or read? You know you can just skip to the next quiz, right? It's not obligatory to read all the comments.

Please take a point off my score, I have no idea who or what Dewitt Clinton is or was!