A record of the heights of the presidents and presidential candidates of the United States is useful for evaluating what role, if any, height plays in presidential elections in the United States. Some observers have noted that the taller of the two major-party candidates tends to prevail, and argue this is due to the public's preference for taller candidates.As some examples, USA TODAY listed height among six criteria for predicting who would win the 2004 election; a Washington Post blog noted the significance of height in physical appearance and its effect on voters. See the discussion of this phenomenon later in the article for further examples.
The tallest U.S. president was Abraham Lincoln at , while the shortest was James Madison at . The average height of the 45 U.S. presidents is approximately .
Donald Trump, the current president, is listed as tall according to the White House physician (as of May 2026). Trump's height is disputed; he is generally considered shorter than his officially listed height. JD Vance, the current vice president, is reportedly tall.
Electoral success as a function of height
Folk wisdom about U.S. presidential politics holds that the taller of the two major-party candidates always wins or almost always wins since the advent of the televised presidential debate. The topic is also popular among essayists and popular science writers.
A number of studies have been published, but many have methodological issues, including varied and unjustified date ranges from which elections are sampled in order to calculate percentages of elections in which taller candidates have won. One 2001 study approached the issue by measuring the support of candidates in terms of popular votes, giving evidence for an advantage for taller candidates. Other studies have also compared presidential height to the average height of the population.
According to a 2013 study, significantly taller candidates were more likely to win the popular vote, while they were not more likely to win U.S. presidential elections: the number of taller candidates who won elections did not differ in a statistically significant manner from chance. It also found that the winning probability of the taller candidate increases to the present day, affecting studies which only analyze elections from the recent past.
Mentions in popular culture In Ray Bradbury's 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, when Mildred and her friends discuss the success of one presidential candidate over the other in a recent election, they talk only about the attractiveness of the winning candidate over the loser. One of their points is "You just don't go running a little short man like that against a tall man." A 1975 book called First Impressions: The Psychology of Encountering Others notes: "Elevator Shoes, Anyone? One factor which has a far-reaching influence on how people are perceived, at least in American society, is height. From 1900 to 1968 the man elected U.S. president was always the taller of the two candidates. (Richard Nixon was slightly shorter than George McGovern.)"Kleinke, Chris L., First Impressions: The Psychology of Encountering Others, Prentice-Hall, 1975, p. 13. Google Print A 1978 book titled The Psychology of Person Identification states: "They also say that every President of the USA elected since the turn of the [20th] century has been the taller of the two candidates (Jimmy Carter being an exception)."Clifford, Brian R. and Ray Bull, The Psychology of Person Identification, Routledge & K. Paul, 1978, p. 115. . Print A 1988 article in the Los Angeles Times fashion section about a haberdasher devoted to clothing shorter men included a variation of the tale: "Stern says he just learned that Dukakis is 5 feet, 8 inches. 'Did you know,' he adds, noticeably disappointed, 'that since 1900 the taller of the two candidates always wins?'"Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1988, p. 7 A 1997 book called How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You discusses the issue in a section about the importance of height: "What about height? One assumes the taller the better, because our culture venerates height. In fact, practically every president elected in the United States since 1900 was the taller of the two candidates."Lowndes, Leil, How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You, McGraw-Hill Professional, 1997, pp.174-175. Google Print A 1999 book, Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etcoff, repeated a version of the legend in a section on the power of heights: "... Since 1776 only [two Presidents,] James Madison and Benjamin Harrison[,] have been below-average height. The easiest way to predict the winner in a United States election is to bet on the taller man: in this century you would have had an unbroken string of hits until 1972 when Richard Nixon beat George McGovern."Etcoff, Nancy, Survival of the Prettiest, New York, Anchor Books, 1999. A chapter titled "Epistemology at the Core of Postmodernism" in the 2002 book Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmodernisms makes this observation: "I remember the subversive effect the observation had on me that in every U.S. presidential race, the taller of the two candidates had been elected. It opened up space for a counterdiscourse to the presumed rationality of the electoral process."Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns, edited by D.A. Carson, Zondervan, 2002, p. 83. Google Print The height of Donald Trump has repeatedly come under question and is common topic in popular culture about Trump. Trump claims he is but older documents indicate and some estimates for him are as low as .
U.S. presidents by height order
Rank № President Height(imperial) Height(metric) 1 16 Abraham Lincoln 2 36 Lyndon B. Johnson 3 45, 47 Donald Trump 4 3 Thomas Jefferson 42 Bill Clinton 621 Chester A. Arthur 32 Franklin D. Roosevelt 41 George H. W. Bush 9 1 George Washington Various sources have put Washington's height between 6 ft and 6 ft 3.5 in. See: Chernow, Ron, Washington: A Life, 2010, The Penguin Press HC ; Wilson, Woodrow, George Washington, 2004, Cosimo, Inc., p. 111; Alden, John Richard, George Washington: A Biography, 1984, Louisiana State University Press, p. 11; Lodge, Henry Cabot, George Washington, Vol. I, 2007, The Echo Library, p. 30; Haworth, Paul Leland, George Washington, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, p. 119; Thayer, William Roscoe, George Washington, 1931, Plain Label Books, p. 65; Ford, Paul Leicester, The True George Washington, Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1896, p. 18−19 44 Barack Obama 11 7 Andrew Jackson Remini, Robert V., Andrew Jackson, HarperCollins, 1969, p. 15. 35 John F. Kennedy 40 Ronald Reagan 14 5 James Monroe Whitcomb, John and Claire Whitcomb, Real Life at the White House, Routledge (UK), 2002. 10 John Tyler 15 James Buchanan 20 James A. Garfield 29 Warren G. Harding 38 Gerald Ford 46 Joe Biden 21 27 William Howard Taft Sotos, John G. (2003). Taft and Pickwick: Sleep Apnea in the White House. Chest. 2003;124:1133-1142. Online copy 31 Herbert Hoover 37 Richard Nixon 43 George W. Bush 25 22, 24 Grover Cleveland 28 Woodrow Wilson Levin, Phyllis Lee, Edith & Woodrow: the Wilson White House, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Google Print 27 34 Dwight D. Eisenhower 28 14 Franklin Pierce 17 Andrew Johnson 26 Theodore Roosevelt 30 Calvin Coolidge 32 39 Jimmy Carter 33 13 Millard Fillmore 33 Harry S. Truman 35 19 Rutherford B. Hayes 36 9 William Henry Harrison 11 James K. Polk Behrman, Carol H., James K. Polk, Twenty-First Century Books, 2004. 12 Zachary Taylor 18 Ulysses S. Grant King, Charles, The True Ulysses Grant, Philadelphia & London, J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1914. Google Print40 6 John Quincy Adams Levy, Debbie, John Quincy Adams, Twenty-First Century Books, 2004, p. 28. 41 2 John Adams Ferling, John E., John Adams: A Life, Owl Books, 1996, , p. 169. Google Print 25 William McKinley 43 8 Martin Van Buren Widmer, Ted and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Edward L. Widmer, Martin Van Buren, Times Books, 2005, p. 2. 23 Benjamin Harrison Loderhouse, Gary and Nelson Price, William Addison Hunter, Legendary Hoosiers: Famous Folks from the State of Indiana, Emmis Books, 1999. Google Print45 4 James Madison Phillips, Louis, Ask Me Anything About the Presidents, HarperCollins, 1992.
Comparative table of heights of United States presidential candidates
Taller candidate was elected Shorter candidate was elected Winner and opponent were of the same height Comparison data unavailable