November 6

There's the zero-year jinx, condemning every U.S. President elected in a year ending with zero to die in office, which was broken by Ronald Reagan (elected in 1980). There's Sam Ervin's curse, the jinx that caused every senator from North Carolina elected to Ervin's old seat from 1974 on to serve only one term, which was just broken by Richard Burr. Now President Obama has his own curse to break - the November 6 jinx.

Since the Republican party was founded in 1854, the Grand Old Party has won every presidential election held on this date, today's date. Obama, a Democrat, will run for re-election in 2012, when the presidential election falls on . . . November 6.

November 6 always falls on the first Tuesday following November 1 - and is thus Election Day - in any leap year starting on Sunday, as 2012 will be, and it also fell on a Tuesday in 1900, a presidential election year that was not a leap year. (End-of-century years not divisible by 400 are not leap years, in order to keep the calendar accurate to the minute.) Here are the results of the six presidential elections that have taken place on November 6 since the two current major parties were both formed:

1860: The Democratic party split into two factions over the slavery issue. The Northern and Western factions nominated Stephen Douglas as their presidential candidate; the Southern faction nominated Vice President John C. Breckenridge, who had the backing of President James Buchanan. A minor party nominated another candidate. With the Democrats deeply divided, Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln won an electoral majority with less than 40 percent of the popular vote. The Southern states seceded, and the Civil War began.

1888: Democratic President Grover Cleveland won the popular vote, but Republican Benjamin Harrison, by carrying New York by a narrow margin, won the electoral vote and thus won the Presidency.

1900: Thanks to a booming economy, Republican President William McKinley handily defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a rematch of the 1896 election.

1928: Republican Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, known for his leadership skills, soundly defeated Democratic New York governor Alfred E. Smith, the first Catholic presidential nominee of a major party, in an era of prosperity that ended a year later with the stock market crash.

1956: Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower easily defeated Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson II in a rematch of the 1952 election.

1984: Republican President Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic former Vice President Walter Mondale in an electoral landslide, 525 electoral votes to 13.

What does this mean for 2012? Absolutely nothing. It's just a quirk in history, really. It's worth noting that, apart from Grover Cleveland, no incumbent Democratic President ran in these years in which Election Day fell on November 6. But if the economy doesn't improve, Barack Obama may have a harder time breaking this curse than Richard Burr had in breaking the Senate curse in North Carolina.

Of course, whether or not this is a curse is a matter of perspective. Republicans obviously would see this as a blessing.