Heights of Presidents and Presidential Candidates of The United States - Electoral Success As A Function of Height

Electoral Success As A Function of Height

Various folk wisdoms about U.S. presidential politics put forward the view that the taller of the two major-party candidates always wins or almost always wins since the advent of the televised presidential debate. A study of the numbers reveals these claims are exaggerated at best.

We have more data if we examine the relationship of electoral success to height difference starting from the year 1900, rather than from the beginning of televised debates. As the chart below shows, in the 28 presidential elections between 1900 and 2011, 18 of the winning candidates have been taller than their opponents, while 8 have been shorter, and 2 have been of the same height. The claims about taller candidates winning almost all modern presidential elections is still pervasive, however. Examples of such views include:

• A 2003 essay by New York Times writer Virginia Postrel about artificially increasing the height of growth-stunted children. She notes: "Still, being short does, on average, hurt a person's prospects...The tall guy gets the girl. The taller presidential candidate almost always wins."
• A 1988 article in the Los Angeles Times fashion section about a haberdasher devoted to clothing shorter men included a variation of the tale: "Stern says he just learned that Dukakis is 5 feet, 8 inches. 'Did you know,' he adds, noticeably disappointed, 'that since 1900 the taller of the two candidates always wins?' "
• A 1997 book called How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You discusses the issue in a section about the importance of height: "What about height? One assumes the taller the better, because our culture venerates height. In fact, practically every president elected in the United States since 1900 was the taller of the two candidates."
• A chapter entitled "Epistemology at the Core of Postmodernism" in the 2002 book Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmodernisms makes this observation: "I remember the subversive effect the observation had on me that in every U.S. presidential race, the taller of the two candidates had been elected. It opened up space for a counterdiscourse to the presumed rationality of the electoral process."
• A 1975 book called First Impressions: The Psychology of Encountering Others notes: "Elevator Shoes, Anyone? One factor which has a far-reaching influence on how people are perceived, at least in American society, is height. From 1900 to 1968 the man elected U.S. president was always the taller of the two candidates. (Richard Nixon was slightly shorter than George McGovern.)"
• A 1978 book entitled The Psychology of Person Identification states: "They also say that every President of the USA elected since the turn of the century has been the taller of the two candidates (Jimmy Carter being an exception)."
• A 1999 book, Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etcoff, repeated a version of the legend in a section on the power of heights: "...Since 1776 only James Madison and Benjamin Harrison have been below-average height. The easiest way to predict the winner in a United States election is to bet on the taller man: in this century you would have had an unbroken string of hits until 1972 when Richard Nixon beat George McGovern."

A comparison of the heights of the winning presidential candidate with the losing candidate from each election since 1789 is provided below to evaluate such views.