Thought experiment: Trump gets the nom but dies/becomes incapacitated before the election

There’s an ongoing thread debating whether Trump will be the GOP nominee which has set me thinking: How would things play out if at some point between the convention and Election Day he either died or became so physically and/or mentally incapacitated that he could not go on?

Would his VP running mate move to the presidential slot? Would the GOP scramble to stick someone else in there? How would the MAGAts react? – stay home, write him in, support the substitute?

And how would that affect downballot races? Would it depress the GOP vote overall?

I yield the floor.

This is covered by Republican Party Rule 9:

Republican Party Rules (starts on bottom of linked page)

If the need to select another nominee comes after ballots were printed, I expect voters would be informed by the media on the new ticket. The closer the ticket change came to Election Day, the messier it would be.

Which answers the procedural question, assuming the party doesn’t fall into internecine warfare over who gets to be the substitute. No doubt the closer to Election Day it happened, the messier it would be in any case.

I am still interested in speculation on the broader implications I outlined.

Almost certainly. That’s the whole point of the VP slot, after all, and there really wouldn’t be enough time to re-run the nomination process.

Probably not, see above. They’d have to play the hand they were dealt, or face internal party chaos within weeks, or maybe even days, of the actual election.

There’d probably be a mix of all three. MAGAs are, in general, a bunch of conspiracy theorists, so at least some percentage of them will assume that Trump being dead or incapacitated is All A Plot, and abandon the process entirely. Losing that faction alone will probably be enough to tip the scales to a GOP loss in the Presidential race. The write-in votes will add to that loss. Both of these factions will denounce the parts of MAGA that support the substitute as MAGA In Name Only, as is tradition, causing further chaos in the GOP.

Overall, yes. The MAGAts who renounce the election entirely won’t be voting down-ballot, and the write-ins will probably split on what they do down-ballot. So close races will tip towards the Democratic candidates.

The real question in my mind is, how many Never Trumpers are actually out there, and would they come back to vote GOP if Trump is finally out? If Trump were to actually lose the nomination, I don’t doubt that most of them would come back, but if Trump is only out because he’s dead? Will they still feel estranged from a party that only gave up on Trump because physical reality forced them to?

How the R voters, from never-trumpers to raging MAGAts, react depends a lot IMO on who that VP candidate is.

trump has slyly said it’s not gonna be a surprise. Which is why I think it’s one of his kids or maaaaybe Kushner. He recognizes the opportunity to turn the USA into a hereditary dictatorship along the lines of North Korea. He also recognizes, in his dim toddler way, that his own life & competence may last 4 more years but not 14 or 40 more. “Grab while the grabbing is easy” has been a motto of his since toddlerhood. And one that has stood him in good stead.

If I’m right, the MAGAts will stay mostly loyal to the family brand and the never-trumpers will vote Biden (or abstain) for president plus vote a pure R slate down-ballot.

OTOH, if I’m utterly wrong, and it’s Haley or somebody else sorta boring (by modern waaay outré R standards), then it’ll be the MAGAts abstaining (or writing in god-king trump’s name as a final tribute to their fallen hero) and the never-trumpers who’ll be happily returning to the Party and will vote R from president on down.

Some voters, whose loyalty is completely to Trump, would not vote for another Republican.

Others would be loyal Republicans except that they cannot stomach Trump.

And open-minded voters (not necessarily well-informed), who will give the two tickets a fresh consideration any time one is changed, also exist.

No one knows the size of these groups.

If Trump is replaced with a Palinesque heartbeat abortion law Republican, unwilling to flip-flop there, the GOP has a problem. Otherwise, I think it helps the GOP, since Trump is unpopular.

This will not matter as much as political junkies think — unless the election is extremely close, in which case every factor matters.

When has the GOP demonstrated the slightest inclination to avoid chaos?

And when must the nominee announce at the very latest who his running mate will be? Any rules about that? I’m asking because decency, custom and tradition seem to be no longer as binding as many thought. And could Trump change his running mate unilaterally, on a whim*, at any moment prior to the election? Or after the election but before inauguration?
Because I think it would make a difference to the question in the OP whether Trump dies/becomes incapacitated
a: before he appoints the candidate for VP
b: after he appoints the candidate, but before the election
c: after the election, but before inauguration
and how definitive point b: is changes a lot

It would not surprise me at all if he nominated Ivanka.

* Please don’t tell me he would have to shoot him or her on 5th Avenue first, or have him lynched by a mob in front of the Capitol to change them :scream: He wouldn’t do it to Ivanka, that could be an argument in her favour.

I believe that it has to be no later than at the national convention (the GOP convention is on July 15-18 this time around), which is where the nomination for both the presidential candidate and the vice-presidential candidate is formalized. For non-incumbents, it’s typical for a presumptive nominee to name their running mate in the weeks leading up to that convention.

The problem is that Trump has ignored so many things thet used to be normal, typical, good custom etc. Is it a law? He has ignored some of those too. So I wonder:
Can he change the candidate for VP the night before the election? It would not surprise me if he tried. Would he be considered incapacitated if he tried? By whom? I don’t see the Republican Party acting against him just because he acts crazy. Not even if he shot the VP on 5th Avenue.
I believe that if he fears that nominating a VP candidate opens a door to sidestepping him he will postpone the nomination for as long as he can. And he probably reasons along the lines of: if I have a VP candidate and something happens to me, there is a clear path for the VP candidate to become P candidate. So if there is no such clear path, nothing can happen to me. Therefore, as long as I don’t nominate a VP candidate, I am safe.
And yes, I know there are some non sequiturs in that syllogism.
I hope this does not come across as a hijack, but I believe that as long as there is no definitive VP candidate the question in the OP is impossible to answer.

I do not believe so. My understanding is that the slates of electors in each state (the ones who “vote” in the Electoral College), for each party, are determined prior to the general election, and they are specifically assigned to the party’s ticket of nominees, which specifies both the presidential nominee and the vice-presidential nominee.

Never.

Web search shows that Wendell Wilkie did not express a preference. At the 1940 GOP convention, McNary beat Short on the first vice-presidential convention ballot.

Nice bit of sleuthing.

But, it looks like it still comes down to “even if the nominee doesn’t choose a VP candidate, the party can’t leave the convention without having named one.”

That article indicates that Wilke didn’t care about the choice, and willingly left the decision to the convention chairman. I have a difficult time picturing Trump being willing to leave that choice to someone else.

I personally am proceeding on the assumption Trump doesn’t know, or he would have said it already. I can’t think of a good strategic reason to keep it quiet if you’ve already narrowed it down to one person. And Trump has no inclination to shut up for any other reason.

You’re not allowing for the bribes. Trump will keep it open in the expectation that at least a few people will try to buy it, and there’s no way he’d leave that money on the table.

Which is exactly how Trump’s friend, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, got impeached, and wound up in prison.

Source: Rod Blagojevich - Wikipedia

But we know Trump is immune to impeachment, so that’s no barrier to his actions.

I don’t think that the candidate does actually choose their running mate. I think that the party does, and it’s just tradition that they always choose the person their selected top-of-ticket candidate wants. And they’ll choose whoever Trump wants, too… at the convention. But if he later tries to change his mind to screw them over, they won’t go along with it.

But yeah, Trump definitely hasn’t chosen yet, because he’s utterly incapable of keeping a secret. And he’s keeping his options open to try to maximize the grift.

If this happens there will be a large number of people who would believe he was assassinated by the ‘deep state’ or Biden. There may be a level of chaos which could be consequential to the election.

Double chaos points if it’s not a sudden death and he’s able to make a statement before he passes.

A State of the Union Address given with her trademark vocal fry would be an ordeal.