# Has a presidential candidate ever lost in his home state?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 3, 2000, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415 "2000-07-03T02:49:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/1 "2000-07-03T02:49:51Z")
During the general election that is.
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### Author:  [@TNTruth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TNTruth)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/2 "2000-07-03T03:23:05Z")
George Mcgovern in’72. I think Grover Cleveland failed to carry his home state once, but I’ll have to check.
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### Author:  [@TNTruth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TNTruth)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/3 "2000-07-03T03:33:42Z")
Yeah, Grover Cleveland in 1888. He ran in '84, '88 & '92, and went two for three. Something went wrong in '88; don’t know what. He went to the White House in '84 from the New York state house. But he lost his bid in '88 by less than New York’s electoral vote, so his own state sent him on a 4 year vacation.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/4 "2000-07-03T03:49:38Z")
South Dakota definitely went for Nixon in 1972, so McGovern lost his home state.
George Bush Sr. was born in Massachusetts, and lost that state to both Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton.
I’m pretty sure John Kennedy won California in 1960, over native Californian Richard Nixon.
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### Author:  [@TNTruth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TNTruth)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/5 "2000-07-03T04:08:40Z")
Astorian, Nixon carried CA in’60. George Bush presents a problem, because he didn’t really have a home state. It’s like Virginia claiming Wilson; sure he was born there, but Wilson was governor of NJ prior to winning the presidency. The same is true of Eisenhower. He went straight from the military to the White House without any “home state” political organization.
Anyway, an incomplete list of candidades losing their home states is:
Van Buren in 1840
Polk in 1844
Douglas in 1860
Cleveland in 1888
Taft and Roosevelt in 1912
Wilson in 1916 (If you consider NJ his home state)
Smith in 1928
Hoover in 1932
Landon in 1936
Wilkie in 1940
Dewey in 1944
Stevenson in 1952 & '56
McGovern in 1972
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### Author:  [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/6 "2000-07-03T04:43:31Z")
Even if you do count Bush, the first time someone had to lose and they were both from Massachusetts. But state of birth is a pretty dumb way to think of it.
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### Author:  [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/7 "2000-07-03T04:44:14Z")
I didn’t expect to get such a complete list, especially so quick! Thanks!🙂
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### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/8 "2000-07-03T05:25:45Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*
> Yeah, Grover Cleveland in 1888. He ran in '84, '88 & '92, and went two for three. Something went wrong in '88; don’t know what. He went to the White House in '84 from the New York state house. But he lost his bid in '88 by less than New York’s electoral vote, so his own state sent him on a 4 year vacation.
> \*\*
1888 was a case where there was a strong sectional divide in the country. The Democrats carried the South by an enormous margin, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Republicans squeeking by in the big Northern industrial states, like New York.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/9 "2000-07-03T05:26:34Z")
Ross Perot didn’t get any electroral votes in Texas, in 1992 **or** 1996.
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### Author:  [@TheThill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheThill)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2000, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/10 "2000-07-03T08:08:49Z")
Yes, but then of course scores of “minor-party” candidates all failed to carry anything. But that’s the American tradition…
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2000, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/11 "2000-07-04T20:23:24Z")
Ok, here’s a related question:
Has an incumbent president ever sought reelection and been denied the renomination of his own party? (I would include presidents that threw in the towel and didn’t bother trying after being told that they didn’t have the party’s support.)
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### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2000, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-presidential-candidate-ever-lost-in-his-home-state/24415/12 "2000-07-05T06:39:31Z")
One president has that dubious distinction. Not surprisingly, he was a pretty bad president: Franklin Pierce. Pierce would have accepted renomination except that he pissed off nearly everyone in the Democratic Party. He kept his whole cabinet for his entire term (the only president to do that for a full term) and they all hated each other.
Tyler essentially served one term, but he was never nominated for president, so it’s not the same situation as Pierce (who had campaign literature for him written by Hawthorne). Polk opted to retire after one term (he wasn’t in good health). Fillmore was only a fill-in. Buchanan knew that he was finished politically and didn’t bother to run for re-election. Johnson was impeached and nearly convicted so any chance of running again was out of the question. Hayes only wanted to serve one term. Arthur opted to step down after finishing Garfield’s term because of poor health (he wasn’t very popular with the Republican Party anyway as he turned out to be ethical for its tastes at the time).
In the 20th Century, all the presidents have decided to give re-election or election in their own right a try.