Politicians, parties, and divorce

Factual Questions
1

A friend and I were talking over lunch about the tendency for politicians to have been divorced, and it seemed to us that it might be more common among Republicans than Democrats. Now, the implications of this would be a topic for Great Debates, but the raw numbers should be factual enough. Among prominent politicians in the US, how many of each party have been divorced?

For purposes of this question, unless anyone has a better standard, let’s consider “prominent” to mean governors, the House of Representatives, or above.

2

Don’t know about numbers for Senators, Congresspersons and Governors, but among Presidents, VPs and candidates for those offices, there’ve been 5 that I know of who’ve divorced:

Ronald Reagan
Joe Lieberman
Bob Dole
John Kerry
John McCain

That’s a ratio of 3:2 in favor of Republicans. Note that the only divorced person to actually hold one of these two offices is Reagan, a Republican.

3

Oops, missed one.

Nelson Rockefeller, VP under Ford, was also divorced. That makes the ratio 4:2 in favor of Republicans.

4

That’s not statistically significant, and such a small sample is unlikely ever to be statistically significant.