The 2020 Presidential election: A race against mortality

• Date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Linus Wilson
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rmir.12156

Risk Manag Insur Rev. 2020;23:229–242. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rmir

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229

Received: 23 January 2020

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Accepted: 2 August 2020

DOI: 10.1111/rmir.12156

PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE

The 2020 Presidential election: A race against

mortality

Linus Wilson

Department of Economics & Finance,

B.I. Moody III College of Business

Administration, University of Louisiana at

Lafayette, Lafayette, Louisiana

Correspondence

Linus Wilson, Department of Economics &

Finance, B.I. Moody III College of Business

Administration, University of Louisiana at

Lafayette, Moody Hall, Room 253, P.O.

Box 43709, Lafayette, LA 70504.

Email: linuswilson@louisiana.edu

Abstract

A year from the inauguration, four of the top five

Democratic 2020 U.S. Presidential election candidates

in the polls are in their seventies. Using actuarial data

and the history of Presidential assassinations, the

top two contenders, Former Vice President Joe Biden

and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, have a 24–29%

chance of not surviving to the end of a hypothetical

first term. The 77 and 78‐year‐old men's chances of

dying before the end of a second term as President of

the United States are between 46 and 56%.

KEYWORDS

G22, I1, H55, actuarial tables, COVID‐19, mortality, POTUS,

Presidential elections, SARS‐CoV‐2,

1|INTRODUCTION

Generations of Americans have never lived to see an American President die in office. Indeed,

the last President to die was John F. Kennedy who in 1963 died from an assassin's bullet at the

relatively young age of 46 years. That was over 56 years from the start of the first in the nation

nominating contest in 2020, February 3, Iowa Democratic Caucuses. You would have to go back

to Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in office in 1945 in his record fourth term to find a U.S.

President who died of “natural causes”while in office. To be alive for that event in 2020,

someone would have to be 74 years old. To have voted for FDR, someone would have to be at

least 96 years old. (The voting age was not lowered from 21 to 18 years old until March 21, 1971,

with the ratification of the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.)

The modeling of government risk is important for any business or financial market parti-

cipant. The death of a sitting U.S. President can have huge financial and economic impacts

across all sectors of the markets. A key component of that risk modeling is estimating the

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