The United States of America on Tuesday held its presidential elections to elect its 45th president.
*To date there have been 43 persons who have served as president of the United States of America. Grover Cleveland served twice and is thus deemed both the 22nd and the 24th US president.
*All 43 have been men.
*42 have been white men.
*18 have been Republicans. 15 have been Democrats. (There were also four who represented the Democratic-Republic party, another four from the Whig Party, two each from the National Union and Non-Partisan and one Federalist. John Tyler once represented the Whig Party and was, on another occasion unaffiliated. Abraham Lincoln represented both the Republican and the National Union.)
*7 presidents died in office. One (Richard Nixon) resigned.
*4 presidents – Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John Fitzgerald Kennedy – were assassinated. (Another two – Zachary Taylor and Warren G Harding – were rumoured to have been assassinated in office).
*16 served two terms. Cleveland is the only one of those 16 who did not serve consecutive terms. He served in 1885 to 1889 and was succeeded by Benjamin Harrison then returned for a second term in 1893 to 1897.
*Andrew Jackson was the first full-fledged Democrat elected in 1829. The first Republican was Lincoln (1861).
*William Henry Harrison had the shortest stint as president, serving just one month (March 4 – April 4, 1841) before he died in office. Harrison’s vice president, John Tyler who succeeded him was the first unelected president.
*Millard Filmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford all came to office without being elected following the deaths in office of various presidents and in Ford’s case the resignation of Nixon.
*There are four former presidents still alive – Jimmy Carter, the two Bushes and William Jefferson ‘Bill’ Clinton.
*Ford and Ronald Reagan both lived to be 93 years old though Ford lived longer (93 years and 5 months, Reagan lived 93 years and 4 months).
*The president who lived the shortest life was Kennedy who was assassinated at 46 years old. James Garfield who died in office at 49 years old is the only other president not to have lived to be 50.
*The Democratic Republicans had the longest stretch of presidents, from 1801 to 1829.
*The longest Republican stretch started with Ulysses Grant in 1869 and ended with Chester Arthur in 1885.
*The Democrats have never had more than two consecutive presidencies, the longest being a 12 year spell shared by Roosevelt and Truman.
*Kennedy was the youngest president ever elected at 43 years old. Roosevelt however was the youngest ever to be president, after taking office at 42 years when McKinley was assassinated.
*Reagan was the oldest president elected at age 69. (Donald Trump is 70, Hillary Clinton is 69).