# Home State
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/home-state/40621
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 10, 2000, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/home-state/40621 "2000-11-10T06:34:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2000, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/home-state/40621/1 "2000-11-10T06:34:26Z")
Is Gore the first/only major Presidential candidate not to carry his home state?
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### Author:  [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2000, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/home-state/40621/2 "2000-11-10T06:57:17Z")
No. McGovern (from South Dakota) carried only Massachusetts and DC in 1972. I’m sure there is some clear-cut example of a winner failing to carry his home state. I say clear-cut, because the reference I just looked at listed Nixon as “of New York”, which he lost in the 1968 election. He is more closely identified with California, however, and was listed as “of California” in 1960.
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### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2000, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/home-state/40621/3 "2000-11-10T09:11:19Z")
There have been lots of instances when a major candidate didn’t carry his home state.
Prior to McGovern in 1972:
1956 - Adlai Stevenson didn’t carry Illinois
1952 - Stevenson didn’t carry Illinois this time either
1944 - Thomas Dewey didn’t carry New York, but he was running against another New Yorker in FDR
1940 - Wendell Wilkie didn’t carry New York (that was considered his home state)
1936 - Alf Landon failed to carry Kansas
1932 - Herbert Hoover didn’t carry California
1928 - Al Smith didn’t carry New York
1924 - John Davis didn’t carry West Virginia
1920 - James Cox didn’t win Ohio, but he ran against another candidate from Ohio in Harding
1916 - Woodrow Wilson didn’t carry New Jersey, but he won anyway
1912 - Neither Taft nor Roosevelt carried their home states of Ohio and New York
1904 - Alton Parker lost NY, but ran against another New York candidate
1900 - William Jennings Bryan lost Nebraska
1892 - Benjamin Harrison lost Indiana
1888 - Grover Cleveland lost New York
1880 - Winfield Hancock lost Pennsylvania
1872 - Horace Greeley lost New York
1860 is a weird case with 4 major candidates and the two Democrats: Douglas and Breckenridge both lost their home states.
1856 - John C Fremont lost California
1852 - Winfield Scott lost New Jersey
1844 - James Polk lost Tennessee (but won anyway)
1840 - Martin Van Buren lost New York
Earlier than that, you get into the “Era of Good Feelings” and before that the Federalist/Democratic-Republican contests which aren’t all like today’s elections.
A lot of candidates have lost their home state. And this almost always means he lost the whole election, with the exception of Wilson in 1916 and Polk in 1844.