How come there have been 48 Vice Presidents of the United States and only 45 Presidents?
What occurred to those 3 Vice Presidents to make the numbers this way?
How come there have been 48 Vice Presidents of the United States and only 45 Presidents?
What occurred to those 3 Vice Presidents to make the numbers this way?
What occurred to those 3 Vice Presidents to make the numbers this way?
It's more than just three Vice Presidents who don't match properly:
But this is counteracted by Vice Presidents who replaced their Presidents and served out the term without a Vice President:
Or Vice President for two Presidents:
And some Vice Presidents left office without being replaced. So they didn't break the matches:
Eventually they changed the rules to allow Presidents to choose new Vice Presidents after one left office:
Ford broke the matches when he replaced Agnew while Nixon was still President, but otherwise this balanced.
So overall we have
6 - 6 - 2 + 0 * 5 + 0 * 3 - 1 = -3
That's three more Vice Presidents than Presidents, but we got there with twenty-three exceptions. Eight that didn't affect the count; six that decreased the VP count; and nine that increased the VP count.
Vice Presidents had a tendency to be replaced when a president ran for re-election prior to 1930 as they were not required to be re-nominated.
It is a Wikipedia link but it shows that a few presidents such as Abraham Lincoln had two vice presidents. There were also Vice Presidents that served under 2 presidents such as John C. Calhoun who served under Adams and Jackson.
Also did not realize it but FDR had 3 Vice Presidents with Truman being the last of course. Interesting fact of the day.