Picture it:
During one of the presidential debates before a US presidential election in September or October, disaster strikes. Maybe it’s an earthquake, terrorism, a vengeful act of God, or both candidates get themselves worked up so much that they have heart attacks or strokes. It doesn’t really matter how both candidates shuffle off the mortal coil just a month or two before the presidential election, just that they do.
Now what happens?
Besides panic, that is. Do the first runners up in the primaries become the parties’ new candidates? Are new primaries immediately held? Does the election get delayed? Something else?
Completely unknown and unknowable. What if cats started talking? Anything anybody puts forth is sheer speculation, and they’re just pulling it out of their ass. Such an event would be totally unprecedented and whatever happened would lead to constitution challenges galore.
September gives enough time for the parties to use their rules to decide who their candidate will be and for ballots to be reprinted. October wouldn’t leave that kind of time, so the parties will stick by their VP candidates, the ballots will remain the same, and every body will know who would become president anyway.
What would happen in terms of the election outcome? Pence wins. The rebound from Trump being out of the election gives a lot of voters back to the GOP.
You’d also certainly have conspiracy theories aplenty flying around, and who knows how those would influence peoples’ decisions? It’d probably depend on which of the two died first, if it wasn’t simultaneous. But even then, if people conclude, say, that Trump was deliberately offed, would they assume that it was done by the Democrats, or by establishment Republicans?
If it happened after Election Day who ever was VP on the winning ticket would become President.
I don’t think this is necessarily the case. I’m under the impression both the RNC and DNC would convene meetings and would decide who to put on the respective tickets. This is what happened in 1972 when Eagleton was dropped by McGovern.
I thought there was a column where Cecil addressed this issue in some way but I’m having trouble finding it.
Republicans will vote for a generic Republican. Democrats don’t fall in line so easily. Tim Kaine is a unknown to the Democrats. Pence is known enough to Republican because he is know as a Republican™. There’s no way for me to say it’s a sure thing, but when Trump goes the GOP will rejoice, when Hillary goes the Democratic Party will be crestfallen.
They’ll lose some people who were only voting for Trump just like the Democrats will lose some voters who were only voting for Hillary. Pence is more well known among Republicans than Kaine is among Democrats. Pence doesn’t have to prove himself as a Republican even to those who don’t know him. Kaine has an uphill battle to fight in his own party. A large number of Republicans will be very happy that Pence is their candidate instead of Trump. Tell me how big Kaine’s family is and I’ll tell you how many Democrats will be happy he’s the candidate instead of Hillary.
If the Democrat party can and does make Bernie their candidate they’ll be in much better shape.
Not officially. Officially the Democratic and Republican national committees would convene and nominate new candidates for President. Maybe they would be Kane and Pence, but it isn’t carved in stone.