President Barack Obama, as of this post, received 60,892,345 popular votes in his Presidential re-election bid. This was down from the 69 million votes+ he received in 2008. This is not the first time an incumbent President who was re-elected for another term received fewer popular votes in his next go around than in his previous election. The last that this happened was in 1944 when Franklin D. Roosevelt received fewer votes in his fourth bid for the Presidency than in his third. The last time before that? Roosevelt once again in 1940. Here are the victorious incumbent Presidents and their popular vote totals in back to back elections.
Andrew Jackson
1828: 642,533; 1832: 701,780
Abraham Lincoln
1860: 1,855,593; 1864: 2,218,388
Ulysses S. Grant
1868: 3,013,790; 1872: 3,598,235
William McKinley
1896: 7,102,246; 1900: 7,228,864
Woodrow Wilson
1912: 6,296,284; 1916: 9,126,868
Franklin D. Roosevelt
1932: 22,821,277; 1936: 27,752,648; 1940: 27,313,945; 1944: 25,612,916
Dwight D. Eisenhower
1952: 34,075,529; 1956: 35,579,180
Richard Nixon
1968: 31,783,783; 1972: 47,168,710
Ronald Reagan
1980: 43,903,230; 1984: 54,455,472
Bill Clinton
1992: 44,909,806; 1996: 47,400,125
George W. Bush
2000: 50,460,110; 2004: 62,040,610
Barack Obama
2008: 69,498,215; 2012: 60,892,345
What accounts for the drop in Obama’s total from 2012 to 2008?
Politics Matters 