LOST:
1832 to Andrew Jackson
1844 to James K. Polk

In the election of 1824, although Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the popular and electoral votes, no candidate received a majority of the electoral votes, forcing the election to be determined by the House of Representatives. Clay redirected his supporters towards John Quincy Adams, and Adams was selected as the next president. Following Adams' inauguration, Clay was appointed Secretary of State. This event made Andrew Jackson a lifelong enemy of Henry Clay and Jackson kept Clay busy explaining and denying the allegation made by Jacksonians that the election results were due to a "corrupt bargain" between Clay and Adams.

In 1832 Clay was unanimously nominated for the presidency by the National Republicans

In 1839, Clay was a candidate for the Whig nomination, but his enemies defeated him in the party convention and nominated William Henry Harrison. 

In 1844, he was nominated by the Whigs against James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate. By an audacious fraud that represented him as an enemy of protection, and Polk as its friend, Clay lost the vote of Pennsylvania. Clay then lost the vote of New York by his own letter abating the force of his previous opposition to the annexation of Texas. Even his enemies felt that his defeat by Polk was almost a national calamity.

In 1848, Zachary Taylor, a Mexican War heroÑand hardly even a convert to the Whig partyÑdefeated Clay for the nomination, with even Kentucky deserting her favorite son.

Henry Clay was mauled by a goat in front of the capital building near the end of his life.