What Presidents were not elected?

Answer 1

There were two Presidential elections decided in the House of Representatives

because no one won a majority of the electoral vote.

The first occurred in 1800 when of a glitch in the original Constitutional system (repaired by the 12th amendment not long after!) resulted in a tie between running mates Thomas Jefferson & Aaron Burr. The House eventually decided in favor of Jefferson, whom all understood to have been his party's intended nominee for President. Jefferson also won the electoral vote in 1804.

The second was the multi-candidate race of 1824, in which no candidate received a majority of electoral votes. The House voted for John Quincy Adams. (This infuriated Andrew Jackson, who had received the most popular votes, and charged a "corrupt bargain" when eliminated candidate Henry Clay threw his support to Adams and was later named as Adams's Secretary of State. Likely there was no "bargain" -- and the move made sens in light of the similarity of Adams & Clay's policy views -- but the matter was very ineptly handled by Adams & Clay.)

The presidents never elected "president" by the electoral college are:

John Tyler

Millard Fillmore

Andrew Johnson

Chester Arthur

Gerald Ford

They were elected "vice-president" by the electoral college before ascending to the presidency due to the death/assassination/resignation of their predecessors (with the exception of Gerald Ford who was never elected president or vice president by the college and Millard Fillmore who was elected by the Whig National Convention in 1848 for his vice presidency).

(Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt also ascended to the presidency due to death/assassination of their predecessors, but one can not say they were never been elected president by the electoral college because they ran again and were elected to be President.)

Answer 2

Gerald Ford was appointed Vice President in 1973, when Spiro Agnew resigned. The vice president, traditionally is elected to the position by the Electoral College, but Gerald Ford never went through that process. When president Nixon resigned in 1974, Ford succeeded into the presidency. He lost a bid for a term of his own and thus was president without being elected as either president or vice-president.

John Tyler , Andrew Johnson and Chester Alan Arthur were not elected as president (but were elected as vice president) and became president after the death of the President they served under.

Theodore Roosevelt , Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman , and Lyndon Johnson, were also vice presidents who also came into office after the death of a President, and were not elected at first, but they were later elected to terms of their own.

Answer 3

John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Alan Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson,and Gerald Ford assumed the presidency because they were vice-president when the office became vacant. All but Ford , who was appointed to fill a vacancy, were elected as vice-president. Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman and Johnson were later elected to second terms as president after their first expired.