Which US President holds the current world record for fastest time to US Presidency?
13
198
1.4K
Apr 11
83%
Harry S. Truman
32%
Warren G. Harding
9%
James K. Polk
5%
George Washington
4%
Jimmy Carter
4%
Gerald Ford
3%
Abraham Lincoln
3%
John Adams
3%
Joe Biden
3%
John Tyler
2%
Franklin Pierce
2%
Donald Trump

Specifically, which non-incumbent US President won his election with the shortest amount of time passing between the American electorate becoming generally aware of his candidacy and the election ending in his favor?

More concisely, which US President won on the shortest notice?

Resolves to the US President (or set of US Presidents) that receives the most upvotes in reply to either the following Reddit comment or Reddit thread within the next 30 days.

Comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1b84unt/short_answers_to_simple_questions_march_06_2024/kudusne/

Thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/comments/1bc74w1/which_us_president_holds_the_current_world_record/

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@cos Can this resolve?

@Arky Sorry for the delay! Life has gotten very hectic so I haven't had time to sit down and tally up the votes (I'm even late on doing my taxes). I'll try my best to have this market resolved by Friday.

I recall this cover story is generally considered launching him to VP.

https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19430308,00.html

bought Ṁ1 Harry S. Truman YES

There are definitely some biases in using upvotes (such as advantaging early responses) and I believe the current leader says it is disregarding some of your criteria. Are you going to stick to strict upvotes as your metric?

@simoj Right now, I'm leaning towards disqualifying responses which openly admit to ignoring stated criteria, but I plan to tally upvotes with and without them, and I might consult the marketariat here if there is a significant discrepancy.

For the sake of future markets, can you think of a better way to run markets on the outcomes of Reddit discussions other than counting upvotes?

The title of this market says "fastest time to US Presidency", while the market description says "election".

Asking the obvious question: what about people who became President without an election, because they were Vice President and the President resigned or died? That's by far the fastest way for someone nobody thought of as a candidate for President to become President, but it doesn't involve an election.

@josh I'll let the upvotes decide that! The thread in /r/AskHistory seems to be gaining the most traction at the moment. I'd suggest giving it a look if you're curious. I'm personally still torn as to whether I consider Truman a satisfyingly definitive answer or a mere honorable mention. However, that doesn't affect the resolution criteria.

I'm thinking that I'll tally up the cumulative upvotes received by a given President across all comments mentioning said President, but I'm open to changing this if someone makes a good argument for an alternative resolution mechanism.

Edited the description to reflect the new Reddit resolution source (original thread was closed for being too simple).

Washington became famous in or before 1776 and only became president in 1789, that's a thirteen year break.

@ShakedKoplewitz There was no president during that gap.

this should be a linked multi

@mattyb I'm anticipating Reddit comments with more than one US President listed as potential answers to this question. With that in mind, do you still think this should be a linked multi? And if so, what's the cheapest way to go about making that correction?

I'm also open to adjusting the resolution criteria.

@cos you can n/a and duplicate this.

i mean, it depends how you’ll resolve it. it certainly is framed to be “one wins”, but you can still resolve % from a linked multi

@mattyb If the top comment lists more than one US President as a potential answer to this question, I intend to resolve each of the corresponding markets here at 100%

@cos Mentioning this here as well: I'm thinking that I'll tally up the cumulative upvotes received by a given President across all comments mentioning said President, but I'm open to changing this if someone makes a good argument for an alternative resolution mechanism (including the one originally commented above).

bought Ṁ10 Jimmy Carter NO

@cos This sounds like a good method to me! It has the advantage that it's likelier to lead to a single answer.

Here's my attempt at a bit of base rate discovery!

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