Which U.S. president was elected to four terms in office?

Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to four terms as president of the United States.

Roosevelt won the presidential elections of 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. He was first elected during the Great Depression and served through the New Deal, the buildup to World War II, and most of the war itself. He remains the only U.S. president elected to more than two terms.

Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, less than three months after beginning his fourth term. Vice President Harry S. Truman succeeded him. Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration, held on January 20, 1945, was the only presidential inauguration for a fourth term.

The Twenty-second Amendment, ratified in 1951, established a general two-election limit for presidents. It did not apply retroactively to Roosevelt, who had already died, and it allowed limited exceptions for a vice president who succeeded to the presidency. Roosevelt’s unprecedented tenure is therefore a distinctive feature of twentieth-century American political history.