Mitt Romney's current standing in the polls in Massachusetts gives him the dubious honor of being more unpopular in his home state than any presidential candidate in modern history.

A look back at 50 years of elections in the US shows that if he wins on November 6 Romney would become the first president of modern times to be elected despite losing the popular vote in his home state.

Romney, who was governor of Massachusetts just six years ago, now trails Obama by over 17 points in recent polls there.

Voting trends going back to 1960, when John F Kennedy – who like Romney had a background in Massachusetts politics – show that the winner of the presidential election has always won the state where they served in political office.

The story is largely the same with the losing presidential candidates. Only two in the Guardian's sample of 13 elections have failed to win their states – Al Gore in 2000 and George McGovern in 1972.

But Romney's projected performance in Massachusetts, if accurate, will still stand out from those two candidates. Polls conducted in October show Romney behind Obama by 17.4 points in the state, much worse than either Gore or McGovern fared in their home states.

Gore, who served as a Democratic congressman and later senator for Tennessee before serving as Bill Clinton's vice-president, lost the popular vote in his state, by 51.15% to 47.28% – 3.87 points. He lost the election to George W Bush as well, despite famously winning the popular vote.

George McGovern, a Democratic senator from South Dakota, lost the popular vote in his state to Richard Nixon by 54.15% to 45.52%, or 8.63 points. He lost the presidential election too, in a massive landslide.

The thing the three have in common is that their home states, at the time of their elections, trend towards the opposite party, but even so Romney would hope to be closer in the state where he has spent his entire adult life and where he was governor until 2007.

Romney grew up in Michigan before studying at Stanford university in California for a year. He then spent two years in France as a Mormon missionary before returning to study at Brigham Young University in Utah. The future Republican nominee moved to Massachusetts in 1971 to attend Harvard, and after graduating in 1975 moved into consultancy in Boston, where he spent the majority of his career.

Romney spent five years as a bishop within the Mormon church in Massachusetts in the 1980s, and ran for senate in the state in 1994. He was elected Massachusetts governor in 2002 and served for a single term before resigning to run for president in 2008.

Looking west to Michigan, where Romney spent his formative years and where his father George was a popular three-term governor, it still looks negative. The most recent Rasmussen poll in Michigan shows Obama with support from 52% of likely voters, while 45% plan to vote for Romney.

On the cheerier side, Romney does have a chance of winning New Hampshire, where he has a summer home, and will almost certainly triumph in his undergraduate home of Utah.