How many times in US history has the electorate wanted an "outsider" (non career politician) as a president?

by clevelanders

Trump being an outsider appeals to a lot of the electorate in this election, but I have to imagine this isn't the first time it's happened. Was Reagan viewed that way?

Gama_Rex

It is rare at best for someone with no military or political history to be a nominee for office. Wendell Willkie (a successful businessman and the failed GOP nominee in 1940) and Horace Greeley (a newspaper editor and nominee of the Liberal Republicans in 1872) are the only candidates to have no political or military experience whatsoever to end up a party nominee, and both lost. That said, you can find nominees who have never held elective office before and won. Herbert Hoover spent two terms as Commerce Secretary and a two year stint as head of the FDA but the Presidency was the first office he was ever elected to. Dwight Eisenhower had never held elective office before, but was Supreme Allied Commander in World War II and had decades of military experience.

With the exception of Wendell Willkie, you aren't going to find anyone in the last 100 years with the same total lack of prior political experience as Trump as a major party candidate, but Hoover and Eisenhower would be the next most obvious candidates to look at for people whose presidential bids were their first time running for office.