Handedness of Presidents of the United States

The handedness of presidents of the United States is difficult to establish with any certainty before the 20th century. During the 18th and 19th centuries left-handedness was considered a disability, and teachers would make efforts to suppress it in their students. For this reason there are few concrete references to determine the handedness of presidents in those times.

As of 2014, four out of the last five presidents have been left-handed if Ronald Reagan is included. Counting as far back as the presidency of Harry S. Truman, the number is six (including Reagan) out of twelve. However, not all sources agree that Reagan was left-handed. In one interview, Reagan indicated that he had been born left-handed, but that school and parental pressure forced him to switch to using his right hand.

In the 1992 United States presidential election, all three major candidates, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, were left-handed. The 1996 election also involved three left-handed candidates: Clinton, Perot, and Bob Dole, who learned to use his left hand after his right hand was paralyzed by a World War II injury. In the 2000 and 2004 elections, Bush, Gore, and Kerry were all right-handed. Both major-party candidates in the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama and John McCain, were left-handed.

List of U.S. presidents by handedness since 1923

President	Party	Term	Handedness
Calvin Coolidge	Republican	1923–1929	Right-handed
Herbert Hoover	Republican	1929–1933	Disputed
Franklin D. Roosevelt	Democratic	1933–1945	Right-handed
Harry S. Truman	Democratic	1945–1953	Left-handed
Dwight D. Eisenhower	Republican	1953–1961	Right-handed
John F. Kennedy	Democratic	1961–1963	Right-handed
Lyndon B. Johnson	Democratic	1963–1969	Right-handed
Richard Nixon	Republican	1969–1974	Right-handed
Gerald Ford	Republican	1974–1977	Ambidextrous
Jimmy Carter	Democratic	1977–1981	Right-handed
Ronald Reagan	Republican	1981–1989	Disputed
George H. W. Bush	Republican	1989–1993	Left-handed
Bill Clinton	Democratic	1993–2001	Left-handed
George W. Bush	Republican	2001–2009	Right-handed
Barack Obama	Democratic	2009–present	Left-handed

The first president to be described as left-handed was Herbert Hoover, though this has been disputed. There is no evidence of any left-handed presidents before Hoover, although it was said that President James Garfield could simultaneously write Latin with his right hand and Greek with his left. Gerald Ford described himself as "left-handed sitting down and right-handed standing up". Harry S. Truman was forced by his schoolteachers and parents to switch to using his right hand, according to biographer David McCullough.

The percentage of the population who are left-handed is about 10%. In the popular press, various scientists have commented on this statistical anomaly. Amar Klar, a scientist who has worked on handedness, says that left-handed people "have a wider scope of thinking", and points to the disproportionately high number of Nobel Prize winners, writers, and painters who are left-handed. Michael Peters, a neuropsychologist at the University of Guelph, points out that left-handed people have to get by in a world adapted to right-handers, something which can give them extra mental resilience. Geneticist Daniel Geschwind, in 2009, summarized the state of research into Presidential handedness as follows: "From a statistical standpoint, it looks like something's going on, but what it is, we don't know."

The pattern, however, is not replicated among the thirteen post-World-War-II prime ministers of Great Britain. Only two prime ministers after World War II, David Cameron and James Callaghan, have been left-handed.