US Prez poll 2016: Whoever wins, US will yet not see a president with a mustache in over 100 years!

The US presidential election of 2016 is getting absorbing but one thing is certain: The country will not get a president with a mustache this time either.

Among the candidates who are running for the White House this year, only Republican Ben Carson has a french-cut beard but he has fallen far too behind in the race and is likely to wind up his campaign after Super Tuesday on March 1. None of the other four-Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich---sport any facial hair.

In the Democratic camp, Bernie Sanders is also clean-shaven candidate while the question of a mustache doesn't arise for his rival Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state.

The current President, Barack Obama, also doesn't have a mustache.

The last US president to have sported a mustache was W H Taft 103 years ago!

When actually did we see an American president sporting a mustache? Well, that could be a tricky question in a quiz. The answer is William Howard Taft, the 27th president of the US, who had served between March 4, 1909 and March 4, 1913. The Republican president, who had served the 31st term of the American presidency, was the last of the mustachioed presidents that country saw.

The last Democrat with a mustache to have become a US president was in the 19th century!

None of the next 17 presidents (Obama is the 44th) over the last 103 years have had a mustache and the 45th will not have it either. For the Democrats, the record is even longer. The last mustachioed president the Democratic Party had produced was in the 19th century and it was Grover Cleveland (1893-97).

A trend of mustachioed and non-mustachioed presidents of the US

It is quite a contradiction that what was once a tradition is a completely forgotten story now. If one sees the trend, starting from George Washington, the first president of the US, the country did not see a mustachioed president till Ulysses S Grant, the 18th incumbent who ruled between 1869 and 1877. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th incumbent who ruled between 1861 and 1865, might be seen as an exception but he did not have a mustache and only a beard.

In popular media also, US presidents with mustaches have been uncommon

Thereafter, starting from Grant, nine out of the next 10 presidents had either mustache or beard or both (except the clean-shaven William McKinley who was in office between 1897-1901 and was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt, the seond-last of a mustachioed incumbent till date).

And then starting from Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) till Obama (2009-16), the days of the man's pride disappeared.

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