President Biden, 81, and former President Donald Trump, 78, have been the two oldest candidates to run for president, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re outliers. A look back at the list of former presidents shows the majority entered office much earlier in their political careers.
Data assembled by CBS shows that most U.S. presidents have been in their 50s on Inauguration Day. This aligns with Americans’ preferences: According to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, about half of Americans said the best age for a U.S. president is someone in their 50s. Vice President Kamala Harris turned 60 in October.
The youngest person to be elected president in recent history was Barack Obama, who was inaugurated in 2009 at age 47. But he doesn’t hold the record when you look back further. In fact, there are four presidents who were younger than Obama when they began their stints at the White House.
Read on for the full list of the youngest presidents in U.S. history.
The youngest president in U.S. history is Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. He was thrust into the nation’s top post in 1909 at age 42 after President William McKinley was assassinated while visiting an exposition in Buffalo, New York.
Roosevelt quickly injected his youthful vigor into the role, driving progressive policies at home and an active foreign policy agenda abroad. His famous advice on world politics, repeated in generations of school textbooks, was: “Speak softly and carry a big stick…”
The youngest presidents after Roosevelt were John F. Kennedy, who was 43 years old at his inauguration; Bill Clinton, who was 46; and Ulysses S. Grant, who was also 46.
Just nine U.S. presidents, or roughly 1 in 5, have been in their 40s, and none have been in their 30s. This sets the U.S. apart from countries like Ecuador, Chile and France, which have all elected leaders in their 30s. One of the youngest leaders in the world is Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, now 36, who has overseen the country of 22 million since 2022.
Back in 1789, the Constitution established 35 as the minimum age requirement to become president, but the times have changed, said Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University.
“This rule was adopted when the life expectancy in America was about that (mid-30s), on average,” he said. “Clearly, the Founders expected presidents would be older, and likely experienced as a result.”
As to why there have been so few young candidates, Panagopoulos said it could have to do with the way they may be perceived by voters. “Experience extracts a premium in the voting calculus, which could explain why so few presidents have been young,” he said. “Voters shun inexperienced candidates, and, as the saying goes, experience comes with age.”
Conversely, if candidates are on the older side, voters may question whether they’re up for the challenge, as they consider their mental acuity and physical fitness, he said.
