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Trivia answer
How many sitting presidents have lost their bids for renomination?
a. Five
b. Two
c. Zero
d. Seven
There have been five sitting presidents who ran for re-election but did not win their party's nomination: John Tyler (Whig) in 1844, Millard Fillmore (Whig) in 1852, Franklin Pierce (D) in 1856, Andrew Johnson (D) in 1868, and Chester Arthur (R) in 1884.
Of the five, Pierce was the only president who was elected to his first term; the other four presidents had each been elected as vice president and succeeded to the office following the death of the elected president. The 1856 election was also the only one where the candidate who defeated the president went on to win in November; Pierce lost the Democratic nomination to James Buchanan (D), who had also run against him in 1852. Buchanan went on to defeat John Fremont (R) and Millard Fillmore (Know-Nothing) in the general election and served a single term as president.[1]
A similar, though not identical, case took place in 1968, when incumbent Lyndon Johnson (D) announced that he would not seek re-election. Johnson had succeeded to the office in 1963 following the assassination of John F. Kennedy (D) and was elected to a full term in 1964. Because he had served less than two years of Kennedy's term, he was eligible for election to a third term in 1968 and appeared on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary. However, Johnson had not formally launched a re-election campaign or stated that he intended to seek re-election at the time of the announcement.[2] The nomination eventually went to Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D), whom former Vice President Richard Nixon (R) defeated in the general election.
