The office of vice president—the second-highest position in the executive branch, and first in the constitutional line of succession—might seem like a good launching pad for a politician with aspirations of attaining the nation’s highest office. But relatively few vice presidents—just 15 of the 49 who served between 1789 and 2021—became president, and eight of those did it by taking over after the death of a president, while another, Gerald R. Ford, rose to the office when his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, resigned. Only six vice presidents managed to get elected president on their own.
“Vice presidents are pretty successful at gaining their party’s nomination for president,” says John McGlennon, a professor at William & Mary university in Virginia, where he specializes in American politics. “But they’re less successful at actually winning elections.”
One prominent example is Hubert Humphrey, who served as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president and was chosen as the Democratic nominee at the 1968 Democratic Convention, but then lost the presidential election that fall. Other vice presidents who managed to win Democratic nomination—Walter Mondale, VP under Jimmy Carter, and Al Gore, VP under Bill Clinton—also failed in 1984 and 2000, respectively (although Gore managed to win the popular vote).
“Sometimes voters are just ready to move on,” McGlennon says.
The job also creates certain hindrances to future aspirations. “The nature of being vice president is to stay in the background,” explains University of Richmond political science professor Christopher Miller. “It’s hard to pivot from that to taking the spotlight and convincing people you deserve it.”
Which VPs stand the best chance of being elected? Possibly, the ones who wait to run, so they can position themselves as challengers rather than incumbents.
“If you look at modern history, two of three VPs who became president did so after a gap between their vice presidency and presidency: Nixon and Biden,” says Gayle Alberda, an associate professor of politics at Fairfield University.
Here are American vice presidents who became president—despite the odds.
1-2. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
Though George Washington easily won the first presidential election in 1789 with 69 electoral votes, under the rules of the time, runner-up John Adams, a fellow Federalist, legislator and diplomat from Massachusetts, was named vice president. Adams then won election in his own right in 1796, with Democratic-Republican party rival Thomas Jefferson finishing second, leaving the country in the odd position of having a president and VP from different political parties. In the highly partisan, nasty election of 1800, Jefferson eventually emerged victorious.
3. Martin Van Buren
A New York politician, Martin Van Buren was appointed by Andrew Jackson as his Secretary of State. Van Buren proved adept at navigating the bitter rivalries within the Jackson administration, and during Jackson’s second term from 1833 to 1837, Van Buren served as his vice president. In the election of 1836, Van Buren ran as a Democrat and defeated three Whig party candidates. Van Buren would serve just one term. With the economy mired in a severe downturn in 1840, Van Buren was beaten by Whig candidate William Henry Harrison.
4. John Tyler
A former Representative and Senator from Virginia, John Tyler was elected as vice president on the Whig Party ticket in 1840 with William Henry Harrison. After Harrison died just 32 days after his inauguration in 1841, Tyler was sworn in to replace him.
In an effort to establish an orderly transition, Tyler kept Harrison’s entire cabinet, but almost all of them resigned in protest after Tyler vetoed a bill to establish the Bank of the United States. Tyler opted not to run for reelection in 1844.
5. Millard Fillmore
When the Whigs picked Gen. Zachary Taylor, a southern enslaver, as their presidential candidate in 1848, they tried to placate the abolitionists in their ranks by adding Millard Fillmore, a northerner. Taylor and Fillmore didn’t even meet until after they’d won the election, and they didn’t get along, which led Taylor to shut out Fillmore from any real role in his administration. But after Taylor died in office in 1850, possibly of cholera, Fillmore found himself in charge.
Fillmore ran for reelection in 1856, but lost, and his poor performance led to the demise of the Whigs.
6. Andrew Johnson
The Tennessean Andew Johnson served in the U.S. House and Senate, where he supported slavery and states’ rights, but opposed southern states’ secession from the Union in 1861. Abraham Lincoln chose him as his running mate in 1864, when the Republicans joined forces with some Democrats in a “Union” party ticket. When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, Johnson, who also had been marked for death by the plotters, became president.
In 1868, Johnson became the first president ever to be impeached, when the House voted 126 to 47 to put him on trial in the Senate. Johnson managed to avoid conviction by a single vote, and served out his term.
7. Chester A. Arthur
Vermont native Chester Arthur, a school principal and lawyer by trade, had little government experience except for a stint as collector of tariffs for the port of New York, where also he routinely collected salary kickbacks from employees to support the Republican Party. Presidential candidate James Garfield picked him for regional balance for the 1880 Republican ticket. But after Garfield was fatally shot by an emotionally disturbed assassin, Charles J. Giteau, in 1881, Arthur took Garfield’s place.
Some feared Arthur would act like a hack machine politician, but as president he showed a willingness to reform. He did, however, sign into law the Chinese Exclusion Act, a discriminatory bill banning Chinese immigration and forbidding Chinese immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens. Arthur lost his party’s nomination in 1884.
8. Theodore Roosevelt
A physical fitness buff and Spanish-American War hero, Teddy Roosevelt developed a reputation for fierce independence as New York governor. Republican party bosses tried to neutralize him by putting him on the 1900 ticket with William McKinley, figuring that he would have little leverage to advance his progressive agenda as VP. But when McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Roosevelt suddenly was the man in charge.
To gain support from industrialists, he held back on pushing progressive and reform policies at first, but after winning reelection in a landslide in 1904, he embarked on the ambitious “Square Deal” program, which regulated industry, promoted social programs to help the poor, and set aside 200 million acres of wilderness for preservation. After he left office, Roosevelt grew disenchanted with his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, and ran unsuccessfully against him as a third-party candidate in 1912.
9. Calvin Coolidge
Vermont native Calvin Coolidge served as the lieutenant governor and governor of Massachusetts before he was selected as Warren Harding’s running mate in 1920. After Harding died of a heart attack in 1923, the notoriously cool and unemotional Coolidge was sworn in by his father, a justice of the peace. He ran successfully for reelection in 1924, with the slogan “Keep Cool with Coolidge.”
A believer in trickle-down economics, Coolidge got Congress to cut taxes for the wealthy, but he did little to curb the stock-market speculation that led to a catastrophic crash in 1929 during the subsequent Herbert Hoover administration. He chose not to run for reelection in 1928, announcing his decision with a one-sentence typewritten statement that he never explained.
10. Harry S. Truman
Missouri native Harry Truman couldn’t get into West Point because of his poor eyesight, and had to work on his family’s farm instead, until his National Guard unit shipped out to fight in World War I. After the war, he rose in local Missouri politics and was elected to the U.S. Senate. Near the end of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose Truman as his running mate on a 1944 Democratic ticket that won easily, but Truman served less than three months as VP before Roosevelt died and Truman replaced him.
Despite his humble background and lack of education, Truman turned out to be one of the most consequential presidents in U.S. history, making the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan to end the war. An aggressive internationalist, Truman went on to confront the Soviet Union and newly-communist China in the Cold War. Though his political fortunes were battered by high inflation and consumer goods shortages, Truman managed to win reelection in 1948, in a stunning political comeback. After communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, Truman rallied the U.S. to the South’s defense, but the bloody stalemate that ensued hurt Truman’s popularity and contributed to his decision not to run for reelection in 1952.
11. Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Johnson, a Texan who served as Senate majority leader, was chosen by John F. Kennedy as his running mate when he was elected in 1960. Even so, Johnson was not in Kennedy's inner circle and held little influence. That all changed when Kennedy was assassinated on a visit to Dallas in 1963. Johnson, who was just two cars behind Kennedy in the motorcade, escaped injury, and he was sworn in on Air Force One later that afternoon.
Johnson ran for reelection in Kennedy’s place in 1964, and crushed Republican Barry Goldwater, who many voters perceived as too extreme. Johnson used his mandate to make massive changes in the social safety net, engineering passage of Medicare, pumping money into education and rebuilding cities, and also pushed through civil rights bills that outlawed discrimination in voting, interstate commerce and housing. But his escalation of the U.S. war against communist rebels in Vietnam proved unpopular, and Johnson eventually chose not to run in 1968.
12. Richard M. Nixon
Richard Nixon, a Californian who served in the House and Senate and then as Dwight Eisenhower’s VP from 1953-1961, was unable to build on Eisenhower’s popularity, and lost a close election in 1960 to Democrat John F. Kennedy. Nevertheless, Nixon managed to rebuild his political viability, and in 1968, won a narrow victory to the presidency in a three-way race with Democrat Hubert Humphrey and segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace.
Nixon went on to win reelection in 1972 in a rout over antiwar Democrat George McGovern. Nixon had many achievements as president, from ending the military draft to founding the Environmental Protection Agency and moving to establish normal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. But the Watergate scandal sunk his political fortunes, and he became the first president to resign from office.
13. Gerald R. Ford
Gerald Ford, a veteran legislator from Michigan, replaced Spiro Agnew as Richard Nixon’s vice president after Agnew was forced to resign in 1973 over allegations of corruption. In the summer of 1974, Ford replaced Nixon himself, who decided to quit rather than go through impeachment and a trial in the Senate. A month later, Ford pardoned his predecessor “for all offenses against the United States for which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed.” That action was unpopular, and likely contributed to Ford’s narrow loss to Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.
14. George H.W. Bush
In addition to serving two terms as Ronald Reagan’s VP, George H.W. Bush had an impressive resume: a World War II Navy aviator, two terms in Congress, stints as UN Ambassador, chairman of the Republican National Committee, Chief of Liaison for the People’s Republic of China, and Central Intelligence Agency director. Bush easily defeated the Democratic candidate, Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis, in 1988.
Bush oversaw the end of the Cold War and also led an international coalition that expelled Iraqi dictator from neighboring Kuwait, which he had invaded. But Bush’s reelection prospects were hurt by an economic downturn and the emergence of a charismatic Democratic rival, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, as well as pushback from the far right in his own party. In 1992, he failed to win reelection.
15. Joe Biden
Biden, a Delaware resident who served for decades in the U.S. Senate, ran twice unsuccessfully for president before Barack Obama selected him as running mate in 2008. Biden decided not to run for president in 2016, in part due to the cancer death of his son, Beau. However, Biden eventually put together a winning multiracial coalition and won the presidency in the subsequent 2020 election, attracting more than 81 million votes.
