How the Sound of Your Name Can Win You the Presidency

What’s in a name? Well, possibly the Presidency.

This study shows how certain rhythmic and aural traits of the last names of Presidential candidates show a statistically significant correlation to which candidate gets elected.

Credit: Kim Raff/The News & Advance

Taking the name pairings for candidates from every Presidential election from 1842 (when the popular vote began to be recorded) to 1992, the study's name analysis is 83% accurate in predicting who would win the election. That is, only seven poorly-named candidates won. The study even goes on to give some explanations for those occurrences. For instance, when Van Buren beat Harrison in 1836, his campaign was completely an Andrew Jackson show. Jackson’s name beats Van Buren’s. Since Van Buren kept a low profile, many people were voting for the establishment and for Jackson who had endorsed Van Buren (17).

The reason? Well, probably because the candidates appeal to undecided, centrist, “swing” voters and in attempting not to alienate them do not give very clear stances on the issues that matter to them. Or they all occupy the same stances. So those that go into the voting booth “undecided” don’t have much to decide on. And so they go with their gut. And in this case, the gut is really the ear.

This is the list of name characteristics. Note that category C is a weaker predictor than A and B. 

So how does this all break down for the upcoming election? I’ve scored it below. The three categories correspond to rhythm, vowels, and consonants in that order.

Bachmann: 3 + 1 + .5  or -.5 = 4.5 or 3.5 (discrepancy due to the ambiguity of the "special harshness" category) 

Romney: 3 + 1 + -.5 = 3.5

Cain: -.5 + 0 + 1.5 = 1

Pawlenty: 0 + .5 + 0 = .5

Santorum: 0 + 1 + -.5 = .5

Paul: -.5 + 0 + 0 = -.5

Gingrich: 3 + -1.5 + -2.5 = -1

Funny. That's kind of how I see the likelihood myself. How does Obama do? 

Obama: 0 + 1 or 2 + 0 = 1 or 2 (discrepancy based upon possible expansion of category B4, which could apply to other ending-vowels according to the authors) 

But Obama fans, don’t worry yet. No Presidential candidate has ever won having two medial stops in their family name. Bachmann (ch and m) and Romney (m and n) would fall into this category. Though Romney’s stops are both affricatives which are particularly presidential sounds.

Strange Findings: Adlai Stevenson resigned dropped out of an Illinois 1986 state election because of well-named competition to the party: “Janice Hart beat Aurelia Pucinski, while Mark Fairchild out-polled George Sangmeister,” (159).

Apparently, people have suspected this phenomenon’s potency for a long time. In a 1986 study, fake pollsters asked students would they rather vote for the candidates Fairchild and Sangmeister. These were real candidates but not for the region that the students were eligible voters! Fairchild won easily and only 30% of students refused to answer without additional information! (159)

High back vowels tend to be associated with elites. This explains why Van Buren in the 1840 election was easily characterized as an aristocratic snob even though he was from a working-class background. (170) 

As always, the full article is available on Ziddu. More importantly, e-mail me at weirdresearch@gmail.com how your name ranks on the scale. Would you be able to beat Bachmann? Romney? Or the most confidence-inducing, Presidential, and unsuccessful candidate name of all-time (with a whopping 6.5): Bryan?