Most royal candidate theory

The most royal candidate theory is the term given to the fringe belief that every presidential election in the United States has been won by the candidate with the most royal blood, i.e. the closest ties to the European bloodline.

Claims

Proponents of the theory claimed that every U.S. president since George Washington can have their bloodline traced back to various European royals, with at least thirty-three presidents having been descended from Alfred the Great and Charlemagne.[1] This system was used to (apparently successfully) predict presidential elections from 1980-2004, when it failed to predict George W Bush's reelection.[2][3][4]

Objections

Critics of the theory claim that the odds of any given person being distantly related to royalty are remarkably high, with one estimate suggesting that more than 150 million Americans are of royal descent.[5] This is because when ancestral lines are traced back through time, the number of ancestors doubles with each generation. If any person traced their bloodline back to the year 1500, for example, they would discover about a million ancestors.[6] Although there are relatively few royal figures in history, pedigree collapse explains how so many people can be linked to famous rulers such as Alfred the Great, and indeed how any one person could be said to have a tenuous connection to anyone else in the world.[7]

While Harold Brooks-Baker was alive, this theory would reappear every four years, during the Presidential election campaign, as he would tour the talk circuit expounding upon it. He would give examples of presidents whose losing opponents did not have royal blood (Reagan vs Mondale), or where the winner simply had "more" royalty (Kennedy vs Nixon).[8]

Aside from the question of whether the "most royal" assessments for all previous presidential campaigns were accurate, the theory was also challenged on the grounds of whether it could possibly matter, because of the mathematically tiny amount of "royal blood" present in the winning candidate, under even the best of conditions. Most were only "related" to royalty if one traced their lineage back for centuries, each subsequent generation having therefore cut that "royalness" in half.[9]

In 2004, Brooks-Baker announced that John Kerry would be the winner, because while he and Bush actually shared much of the same Royal ancestry, Kerry had slightly more.[10] In fact, Kerry lost, and this was Brooks-Baker's last such prediction, as he died a few months later.[11]

References

  1. ↑ The Daily Mail: Is ruling in the genes? All presidents bar one are directly descended from a medieval English king. August 2012.
  2. ↑ The New York Times:
    Experts Link Reagan To Ancient Irish King April 8, 1984.
  3. ↑ Reuters: "Bush Beats Gore in Presidential 'Blue Blood' Stakes." October 17, 2000.
  4. ↑ The New York Times:: Bush, They Say, Is Indeed a Connecticut Yankee From King Henry's Court. July 5, 1988.
  5. ↑ Boyd Roberts, Gary. "http://learn.ancestry.com/LearnMore/Article.aspx?id=3349". Retrieved 28 February 2012.
  6. ↑ Horlacher, Gary. "http://www.progenealogists.com/greatbritain/medievalgenealogy.htm". Retrieved 28 February 2012.
  7. ↑ Adams, Cecil. "http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/412/2-4-8-16-how-can-you-always-have-more-ancestors-as-you-go-back-in-time". Retrieved 28 February 2012.
  8. ↑ The New York Times: Chronicle. October 28, 1996.
  9. ↑ The New York Times: Royal Genes Too Diluted to Help Bush. July 21, 1988.
  10. ↑ The Guardian: Kerry's royal roots will give him victory, says Burke's. August 17, 2004.
  11. ↑ USA Today: Royal authority Harold Brooks-Baker dies. March 6, 2005.