# Politicians, parties, and divorce

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-parties-and-divorce/500991>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 25, 2009, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-parties-and-divorce/500991 "2009-06-25T22:07:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2009, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-parties-and-divorce/500991/1 "2009-06-25T22:07:32Z")

</div>

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.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-parties-and-divorce/500991/2 "2009-06-26T11:21:06Z")

</div>

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.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-parties-and-divorce/500991/3 "2009-06-26T11:42:50Z")

</div>

Oops, missed one.

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

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2009, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/politicians-parties-and-divorce/500991/4 "2009-06-26T13:26:28Z")

</div>

> [@dtilque](#):
>
> Oops, missed one.
> 
> Nelson Rockefeller, VP under Ford, was also divorced. That makes the ratio 4:2 in favor of Republicans.

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