VP

August 4th, 2008, by Andrew

A reporter asked me, “Do people run for VP, who in the past, how, has it worked or failed?”

My reply: I haven’t looked at this recently, but I recall when studying election forecasting 15 years ago, that the estimated effect of VP choice was something like +3 percentage points in the VP’s home state, so nothing huge.

What about national effects? In 1988, I recall that polls found that Bush alone (in a Bush vs. Dukakis matchup) did about 2 points better than Bush-Quayle vs. Dukakis-Bentsen. But this is probably an upper bound:
- Quayle was a horrible candidate
- And probably, when it came down to the voting booth, it’s my guess that less than 2% of people decided not to vote for Bush on the basis of Quayle.
See also Nate Silver’s thoughts on the topic.

So probably the biggest effect of VP is that this is a person who’s likely to become president. (I don’t have the stats on this, but the total probability must be pretty high.) If I were choosing, I’d pick the person I’d most like as a future president and probably not worry so much about electoral calculations, fun though they are to think about.

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• No evidence that VP choice has much effect on the vote
• Partisan Filters on Reality
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• What difference would it make if everybody voted?

Entry Filed under: Elections