Heights of United States Presidents and presidential candidates

This is a list of heights of United States presidential candidates.
*U.S. customary units - Based on the Imperial system, commonly known as the English system or British system of measure. Units used here are feet (ft) & inches (in).
*Metric is the International System of Units, commonly known as the "metric system." Units used here are meters.

2008

Most estimates put the height of Barack Obama, the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, between 6 ft 1 in and 6 ft 2 in (approximately 1.87 meters). [cite web|url=http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/12/obama_natural/|author=Edward McClelland|accessdate=2008-07-15|publisher=Salon Media Group|title=How Obama learned to be a natural] [cite web|url=http://www.celebheights.com/s/Barack-Obama-4695.html|title=Varying opinions on Obama's height]

John McCain, the nominee of the United States Republican Party in the United States presidential election, 2008, is 5 ft 6 in (1.68 meters).cite news|url=http://cbs5.com/campaign08/john.mccain.health.2.731119.html|title=Medical Records Show McCain In General Good Health|work=AP|date=2008-05-24|accessdate=2008-06-10] Were McCain elected to the presidency, he would be the shortest president in 120 years and tied for the second-shortest president of all time.

The height difference between them is around seven inches (18 centimeters) with McCain being four inches (or 10 centimeters) shorter than the average height of all U.S. Presidents at 5 ft 10 in (178 cm): a number that has been rising along with the height of the general United States population.

Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joseph Biden is 6 ft (1.83 meters) tall. [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0081182/bio Joseph R. Biden Bio] ]

U.S. Presidents by height order

The average American male (2005 data) is 5 ft 9.2 in (1.76 m) [http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/growthcharts2/f/avg_ht_male.htm MAverage Height for a Man Statistics 2005] ] , with a slightly rising trend reflective of the rise in height of the general U.S. population. Incidentally, however, some of the tallest U.S. Presidents were of the young republic. The tallest First Lady was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was 5' 11" (1.83 m).

*Note: Won popular vote, but not election.

The taller man wins?

The table above was created to compare the veracity of the folk wisdom about U.S. presidential politics that the taller of the two major-party candidates always wins or always wins since the advent of the televised presidential debate, since 1900, and so on.

* An example of this view is included in a 2003 essay by "New York Times" writer Virginia Postrel about artificially increasing the height of growth-stunted children: "Still, being short does, on average, hurt a person's prospects...The tall guy gets the girl. The taller presidential candidate almost always wins." [Postrel, Virginia, [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E1DA173BF937A2575AC0A9659C8B63 "Going to Great Lengths,"] "New York Times", August 31, 2003.]
* A 1988 article in the "Los Angeles Times" fashion section about a haberdasher devoted to clothing shorter men included a variation of the tale: "Stern says he just learned that Dukakis is 5 feet, 8 inches. 'Did you know,' he adds, noticeably disappointed, 'that since 1900 the taller of the two candidates always wins?' " ["Los Angeles Times", Mar 25, 1988, pg. 7]
* A 1997 book called "How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You" discusses the issue in a section about the importance of height, "What about height? One assumes the taller the better, because our culture venerates height. In fact, practically every president elected in the United States since 1900 was the taller of the two candidates."Lowndes, Leil, "How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You", McGraw-Hill Professional, 1997, pp.174-175. ISBN 0-8092-2989-7 [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0809229897 Google Print] ]
* "I remember the subversive effect the observation had on me that in every U.S. presidential race, the taller of the two candidates had been elected. It opened up space for a counterdiscourse to the presumed rationality of the electoral process.""Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns", edited by D.A. Carson, Zondervan, 2002, p. 83. ISBN 0-310-24334-3 [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0310243343 Google Print] ]
* A 1975 book called "First Impressions: The Psychology of Encountering Others" notes, "Elevator Shoes, Anyone? One factor which has a far-reaching influence on how people are perceived, at least in American society, is height. From 1900 to 1968 the man elected U.S. president was always the taller of the two candidates. (Richard Nixon was slightly taller than George McGovern.)"Kleinke, Chris L., First Impressions: The Psychology of Encountering Others, Prentice-Hall, 1975, p. 13. ISBN 0-13-318428-5 [http://books.google.com/books?id=4AMR5O8o-_4C&pgis=1 Google Print] ]
* "The Psychology of Person Identification" (published 1978) states, "They also say that every President of the USA elected since the turn of the century has been the taller of the two candidates (Jimmy Carter being an exception)."Clifford, Brian R. and Ray Bull, "The Psychology of Person Identification", Routledge & K. Paul, 1978, p. 115. ISBN 0-7100-8867-1. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0710088671&pgis=1 Google Print] ]
* A 1999 book, "Survival of the Prettiest" by Nancy Etcoff, repeated a version of the legend in a section on the power of heights, "...Since 1776 only [two Presidents,] James Madison and Benjamin Harrison [,] have been below-average height. The easiest way to predict the winner in a United States election is to bet on the taller man: in this century you would have had an unbroken string of hits until 1968 when Richard Nixon beat George McGovern." [Etcoff, Nancy, "Survival of the Prettiest", New York, Anchor Books, 1999. ISBN 0-385-47942-5]

tatistical breakdown

For the 46 elections in which the heights of both candidates are known, the taller candidate won 27 times (approximately 59 percent of the time), the shorter candidate won 17 times (approximately 37 percent of the time), and the candidates were the same height two times (about 4 percent of the time). Of those who were not President or Vice president at the time of the election, the popular vote was won by six who were shorter and sixteen who were taller. We might assume, however, that James Madison, the shortest President, was shorter than his opponent, and this would increase the number to seven for the shorter candidate.

It should be noted, however, that in three of the cases in which the shorter candidate won, the taller candidate actually received more popular votes but lost in the Electoral College; this happened in 1824, 1888, and 2000 (the other time that the electoral vote winner was not the popular vote winner was in 1876, for which we do not know the height of the loser).

So, of the 46 cases for which we have data, the taller candidate has won the popular vote 30 times (65 percent), and the shorter candidate only about 14 times (30 percent of them). This does constitute a statistically significant (p < .05) difference from chance by chi-square test, although this is not the case when electoral victors are considered.

If considering restricting to elections in the 20th and 21st centuries, only 8 out of 27 elections were won by the shorter candidate.

Extremes

The tallest President elected to office was Abraham Lincoln (6'3 3/4", 1.92 m); the tallest President to originally enter the office by means other than election was Lyndon B. Johnson (6'3½", 1.91 m). The shortest President elected to office was James Madison (5'4", 1.62 m); the shortest President to originally enter the office by means other than election was Theodore Roosevelt (5'8", 1.74 m).

The tallest runner-up (of documented height) is Winfield Scott, who stood 6'5" (1.96 m) and lost the 1852 election to Franklin Pierce (5'10", 1.78 m). The title of shortest runner-up (of documented height) is shared by four men, all 5'6" (1.68 m): Aaron Burr, who lost to Thomas Jefferson in 1800; sitting President Martin Van Buren, who lost to William Henry Harrison, in 1840; sitting President Benjamin Harrison, who lost to Grover Cleveland in 1892; and James M. Cox, who lost to Warren G. Harding in 1920.

The largest height difference (when the heights of the winner and the runner-up are both known) was between the candidates of the 1812 election, when DeWitt Clinton stood 11 inches (0.28 m) taller than incumbent James Madison. The second-largest height difference was in the 1864 election, when Abraham Lincoln stood 10 inches (0.25 m) taller than his nearest rival, George McClellan.

See also

* Heightism#Heightism in politics

Further reading

*cite book|title=Facts About the Presidents|author=Joseph Nathan Kane, Steven Anzovin, and Janet Podell|year=2001|publisher=Hw Wilson Co|id=ISBN 0824210077|pages=600 et seq.
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References

External links

* [http://www.hackwriters.com/tall.htm Stats: Does the taller man always win?]
* [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_308.html The Straight Dope: Does the taller candidate always win the election?]
* [http://www.elon.edu/e-web/pendulum/Issues/2004/onlinefeatures/election/tall.xhtml Is presidential race a simple matter of standing tall?]
* [http://www.washingtonian.com/capital_comment/2004/1004capcom.html Forget Hair Dyes, Get Some Lifts!]