A Generation of Futility

Elections won (and lost) by presidents, vice presidents and major-party candidates for those offices, by generation

Note: Each election is counted separately. So, Trump shows up twice as a winner and once as a loser. We exclude people who weren't elected to their office, such as Gerald Ford. In the complicated elections of 1860 and 1912, we counted three major-party tickets. Before 1804, we counted a party's second-highest electoral vote-getter as its VP candidate.
Chart: Andrew Van Dam / The Washington SunSource: Presidential tickets and ages from Wikipedia, all confirmed with the National Archives, American Presidency Project, Library of Congress and House and Senate historians. Generations from Pew Research Center and Generations by William Strauss and Neil Howe