Aug.06

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Today's the Day

Kamala Harris has a big rally scheduled for tonight in Philadelphia, and then a jam-packed campaign schedule for the rest of the week. For these reasons, it is expected that she will announce her choice of running mate today, and then the full Democratic ticket will debut at the event tonight. Indeed, the odds are good that by the time you read this, the pick will already be publicly known.

Does the choice of running mate really matter? This is a question of much interest to historians, political scientists, pundits, psephologists, political advisers and many others. It is also virtually impossible to answer with any certainty. A presidential campaign, and a presidential election, are complicated things with many moving parts. Trying to tease out the impact of any one part of the equation is not dissimilar to searching for a needle in a haystack. The best technique, such as it is, is to make comparisons across elections. For example, if Ronald Reagan chooses a veteran as his running mate (which he did), and the next three Republican presidential nominees go with a non-veteran (which they did), then maybe you can compare the share of the veteran vote for Reagan with the share of the veteran vote for the three Republicans after Reagan, and see if George H.W. Bush helped with that constituency.

This sounds easy enough, but it comes with all kinds of complications. First, depending on the available exit polls, you might not be able to figure out exactly how veterans voted. On top of that, while the Reagan ticket had a veteran as VP (and as P, for that matter), the Bush 41 and John McCain tickets had veterans at the very top of the ticket. So, how do you tease out the effect that VP-candidate Bush had with veteran voters in 1980 and 1984? The answer is: you basically don't. If we want to put it in somewhat scientific terms, there are far too many variables in presidential elections and far too few trials.

This said, we're going to try to answer as best we can. There are, broadly speaking, three ways that a VP candidate might affect a ticket. The first of these is their impact, or their potential impact, across the board. They could add a point or two in the polls, or they could cost a point or two (or more), just based on who they are. You can look pretty long and hard to try to find a clear example of a VP in this category, and when you do, the examples almost always involve running mates who had a negative impact, and cost their ticket a point or two. J.D. Vance might well be one of those (more on him below). Because Vance has such a long and problematic media trail, he could drive some Democrats to the polls who might not otherwise vote. And because Donald Trump is neither young nor healthy, Vance could drive some Republicans or independents away from the Republican ticket, for fear that he might get real power.

The second way a VP can potentially shape a race is to attract some specific constituency. This is the best-known potential impact of a running mate; maybe they can bring in some women voters, or some Black voters, or they can drag their state into their party's column. When it comes to attracting various interest groups, the scholarship has no great answer. Again, for the reasons we outline above, it's too tough to isolate in a satisfactory fashion. Further, when you speak of the constituencies that tend to be included in today's VP discussions, well, there have been a grand total of three women VP candidates, along with two Catholics, one person of color, one Jew and zero openly LGBTQ people. So, there's virtually no data here when it comes to running mates with those profiles.

As to a VP bringing their state into the fold, the effect is weak, but it does exist. If the VP is popular in their home state, and if their home state is very, very close, then it is at least possible that the VP can make the difference. The textbook example here is Lyndon B. Johnson and Texas in 1960; that one was decided by 46,257 votes, and Johnson almost certainly brought that many Texas votes to the ticket (possibly legitimately, possibly not-so-legitimately). For what it is worth, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) is very popular in his home state, which was decided by 80,555 votes in 2020; Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-MN) is very popular in his home state, which was decided by 233,012 votes in 2020; Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) is popular in his home state, which was decided by 10,457 votes in 2020; and Vance is not terribly popular in his home state, which was decided by 475,669 votes in 2020. What it boils down to is that it is at least possible that Shapiro or Kelly could bring their home states along with them, if they are tapped. Walz and Vance, almost certainly not.

The third way a VP candidate can matter is as a reflection on their running mate. That is to say, picking a VP is not only the first major decision a presidential candidate makes, it's also an important signal of what kind of campaign they want to run and, very possibly, the kind of political program they want to implement. Though it is impossible to isolate from other factors, this is nonetheless unquestionably the most important impact the VP has on the ticket.

There is some overlap here with the previous categories, particularly the first one. For example, Sarah Palin might seem like an example for group one—people voted against the McCain-Palin ticket because they were voting against her. And there probably was some of that, since the VP is one heartbeat away from the presidency, and McCain was a candidate with a long history of health problems. However, the evidence suggests that the bigger problem with Palin was what her selection said about McCain. It utterly undercut his image as a maverick and someone willing to work across the aisle, and painted him as a person willing to kowtow to the extreme elements in his party.

Exactly where J.D. Vance fits is an interesting question. Is the reaction to him because of him, and the fact that he might become president one day (or, even if he doesn't, that he might exert influence over a second Trump administration)? Or is the reaction to him really a reaction to Trump, with the Vance pick a reminder of how the former president conducts his business (i.e., from the gut, without much care or thought)? Probably some of both.

We have absolutely no doubt that whatever other impacts Kamala Harris' running mate will have, they will have an impact in this area. Thanks to the unique nature of her rise to "nominee" status, this decision is the first big thing that many voters will "know" about her candidacy. It is, in effect, a substitute for the Democratic primary. If Harris picks well, she could absolutely pick up a point or two in the polls, and see that stick. If she picks poorly, she could absolutely lose a point or two. The good news for her is that Democratic (and all anti-Trump) voters appear to be eager to remain unified. So, she's probably got a bigger margin for error than is normally the case.

In short, we think Harris' pick does matter, at least some. And it could matter a lot. In fact, under the circumstances, it might prove to be the most important VP pick, for electoral purposes, since Harry S. Truman in 1944. So, who is it gonna be? Well, here is how the readers of Electoral-Vote.com have the top five:

Obviously, most of these votes were cast last week, without benefit of the latest information.

The betting markets see things a little differently. Here are the top five candidates, with implied odds, according to PredictIt:

The sixth-most-likely candidate, according to PredictIt? That would be... Kamala Harris. Presumably, that is an after-effect of all the money wagered on her when she was the heavy favorite to be VP. These days, her actual odds of being the Democrats' VP candidate have got to be pretty close to the odds of J.D. Vance being the Democrats' VP candidate. What conceivable sequence of events could knock her out of the #1 slot without knocking her entirely off the ticket?

Meanwhile, if you prefer the rumor-mill approach, well, the scuttlebutt is that Harris has narrowed it down to Shapiro or Walz, with Shapiro the frontrunner. Soon, all will be known. (Z)