No one picks VP candidates to deliver swing states

[DoctorJ]

As I was responding in the GOP Veepstakes thread I thought about the wisdom that a VP candidate from a swing state can help deliver that state. It always seems to be the center of the speculation over who is going to be picked. But when I started thinking back through the elections of my lifetime, it has pretty much never happened.

2008: Obama picks Biden from solid blue Delaware; McCain picks Palin from solid red Alaska.
2004: Kerry picks Edwards from North Carolina. People thought NC might be a longshot swing state early on in 2004, but it didn't take long to become clear that it wasn't going to be. Bush won by twelve points. Besides, NC wasn't too fond of Edwards at the time--I was living there, and his pick didn't seem to cause any excitement at all.
2000: Bush picks Cheney from solid red Wyoming or Texas (take your pick). Gore picks Lieberman from solid blue Connecticut.
1996: Bob Dole picks Jack Kemp from solid blue New York.
1992: Bill Clinton picks Al Gore of Tennessee. OK, maybe, since they did win the usually red TN, but they also won KY so it's really hard to say how it would have gone without a native son.
1988: George HW Bush picks Dan Quayle of Indiana. I doubt this was thought of as a swing state, since Bush won it by 20 points. Dukakis picks Lloyd Bentsen from reliably red Texas.
1984: Walter Mondale picks Geraldine Ferraro from solid blue New York, which still went for Reagan by eight points.

So you have to go back 20 years to find a VP candidate from a swing state, and even then it's questionable whether or not he made the difference. If you were a betting man, you'd be smart to bet against anybody from a swing state.

Is it time to kill off the notion of nominating a VP candidate based on his ability to deliver a key state?

[pkbites]

Originally Posted by DoctorJ

Is it time to kill off the notion of nominating a VP candidate based on his ability to deliver a key state?

I say yes. It's a nice fantasy for some, but as the OP gave ample evidence of, it doesn't deliver in reality. Unless something horrible happens the VP never has any real power (minus a rare vote in the Senate) for 8 years. I'm voting for a President, not the President of the U.S. Senate nor for the guy who could be POTUS 8 years from now.

Evidenced by Palin and Quayle, the VP pick seems to only be able to hurt a ticket, not really help it.

I don't like Mitt Romney much. Even if he picked someone I really liked, such as Paul Ryan, I still wouldn't like Romney and it does little to help me decide who I'm voting for.

[Simplicio]

I agree. The general trend seems to pick someone that covers a perceived weakness in the nominee. Young, inexperienced candidates to pick old warhorses (Biden, Cheney), old, longstanding nominees pick young up-and-comers that are popular with the base (Palin, Edwards, Quayle). Governors tend to pick choices with foreign policy experience (Gore, Cheney, Bush I). Liebermann was chosen since he was a vocal critic of Clinton's personal foibles, and Gore thought it would seperate him from the scandals of his former boss.

Also, as the VP office has grown into a sort of "second in command" position during the last three Presidencies, I think candidates have made some effort to chose someone that would actually be useful after the election was over, as well as someone that helps them get in.

[Lantern]

Yes it appears that candidates rarely pick VP's from swing states. However in the case of Gore it's likely that a Bob Graham pick would have delivered Florida and the presidency. And if there was someone who could have boosted Kerry by a few points in Ohio that would have won him the presidency. So candidates should at least take swing states into consideration. But certainly it's only one of several factors.

In this cycle Rubio and Portman are the leading VP candidates from swing states. Both have clear strengths apart from this but I don't think their state hurts their chances.

[septimus]

OP may be correct, but it should be noted that Biden is popular in his birth-state of Pennsylvania, and among white blue-collar workers there and in neighboring Ohio. To respond "So what: Pennsylvania is reliably blue" is to ignore that black and white were also key colors in 2008 vote prediction.

[RTFirefly]

Lieberman was picked, in part, to deliver a swing state. No, not Connecticut: Florida.

It almost worked, too, but for the "Jews for Buchanan" movement in Palm Beach County.

[theR]

The OP is talking about two separate things and confusing them.

1. A VP candidate delivering a swing state that is also his or her home state
2. A candidate picked to deliver swing votes that aren't a home state

For the second, VP candidates are definitely picked to deliver swing voters and in that sense they are picked to deliver swing states. That the states are not the VP candidate's home state is a separate question covering all of the OP except the last sentence.

Whether this tactic for deciding a VP candidate actually works is a different question, but I think it's pretty clear that case one rarely happens and case two happens often.

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by RTFirefly

Lieberman was picked, in part, to deliver a swing state. No, not Connecticut: Florida.

The Jewish vote goes to the Dems four to one anyways. And Gore/Liebermann didn't do any better or worse amongst Jewish voters then Clinton/Gore. I seriously doubt Liebermann was chosen as an attempt to appeal to his co-religionists.

[Exapno Mapcase]

The whole notion of swing states is a fairly recent one. In most elections in the 20th century one party won a landslide. Nobody thought that the few really close elections - 1948, 1968 - were going to be decided by a vice-presidential pick.

It doesn't take much to start a myth, of course. The 1960 election may be the one example. Kennedy didn't like Johnson at all, but picked him because he was such a power in Congress who balanced Kennedy's youth and inexperience and because he was from Texas, which truly was going to be close. You constantly hear the stupid say that Kennedy won the election by stealing votes in Illinois. In fact, he would have won the presidency even if he lost Illinois because he won Texas by a percent. (Which leads to the stupid claiming that he stole Texas too, but that's an infinite regress.)

So there's maybe one example. Other than that the truism to believe in is that Veeps make no difference at all. You might make an argument that they can hurt - look at the Eagleton fiasco in 1972 and Palin may have hurt more than she helped in 2008 - but you can dismiss any and all speculation on this year's choice as the empty wind of columnists desperately needing to fill space.

[MLS]

JFK picked LBJ just to carry Texas.

[Knorf]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

...Palin may have hurt more than she helped in 2008...

Is there any real doubt about this?

[Marley23]

Is there anything that gets speculated about more and which matters less than vice presidential nominees?

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Knorf

Is there any real doubt about this?

Sure. It's almost impossible to tease out whether a vice-presidential candidate helps or hurts in any way at all. Trying to measure this small effect is subject to large amounts of error. If you're trying to measure two effects and take the difference between them the error bars probably swamp the magnitude of the net. I can find studies that say she helped McCain by four points or hurt him by two points and a bunch of others. It depends greatly on what questions you use to make the determination and whether you agree with the techniques used to put a number on it. There's nothing but doubt about this.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Marley23

Is there anything that gets speculated about more and which matters less than vice presidential nominees?

Sports. The Oscars. Who shot JR. Millions of things.

Mostly because speculation about vice-presidents is confined to about 0.1% of the population.

[Knorf]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

There's nothing but doubt about this.

It seems to me that common wisdom states Palin cost McCain points. But it is hard to assign a precise numeric value to how many.

[saoirse]

Originally Posted by RTFirefly

Lieberman was picked, in part, to deliver a swing state. No, not Connecticut: Florida.

It almost worked, too, but for the "Jews for Buchanan" movement in Palm Beach County.

Connecticut wasn't even that solidly blue (or if it was, no one knew it yet). On election night in 1996, David Brinkley declared that Connecticut would predict the outcome of the election. He was retiring, of course, so he didn't have to worry about ratings any more.

In any case, it's kind of silly to use history to predict presidential elections. The sample size is always going to be way too small to extrapolate. There's really no lesson you can draw about elections today by examining, say, the election of 1824 or even 1924.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Knorf

It seems to me that common wisdom states Palin cost McCain points. But it is hard to assign a precise numeric value to how many.

I agree about the common wisdom, which is why I said it. But one should always doubt the common wisdom, even when one agrees with it. And if you have to say something with no precision and no way of proving it, plant it on a hill of probably's, maybe's, about's, somewhat's, and often's.

[CJJ*]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

Mostly because speculation about vice-presidents is confined to about 0.1% of the population.

True; it's over-speculated because it is the only true "presidential" decision a candidate can make prior to the election. It's really the presidential candidate's decision-making process that's being evaluated when we speculate about the veep.

2008 offers a good example. Rather than any specific opinion held by Palin, it was her clear lack of qualifications for the office that really hurt McCain--it called his personal judgement into doubt. On the other side, I think Biden's various gaffes were a non-factor for Obama; Biden's long history in Washington made him a prudent choice regardless of whether you agreed with his legislative history, and thus enhanced Obama's presidential qualities.