2008 in review - VP Math (June)

I decided to actually review the validity of one of the most time-wasting exercises each election cycle - the "geographically balanced" ticket.

Now that we’ve finally settled on presidential candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties, speculation naturally turns to the second spot on the ticket, and theories abound about why McCain and Obama should pick this or that candidate.  And these speculations always seem to revolve first, and sometimes solely, on the ability of the chosen veep candidate to bring in the electoral votes of his home state.

Like so many aspects of political punditry in this country, this game has no basis in reality.  The simple fact is that when it is time to tally up the votes in the Electoral College, the vice-presidential candidate has been close to irrelevant.

Conventional wisdom for the value of the vice-president in the general election usually looks first to 1960.  It is true that Texas went for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and so Johnson is widely credited with having carried Texas for Kennedy.  However, Texas in the 1960s was not the solidly Republican state it has become - Texas went on to vote for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. 

In 1968, Spiro Agnew on the ticket didn’t result in his home state, Maryland, going for Nixon.  In 1976, Walter Mondale’s Minnesota voted for Jimmy Carter, but Minnesota has been in the Democratic column in every election from 1960.

In 1980, Texas was listed as the official home-state of the peripatetic George Bush, though he was generally considered as being from Kennebunkport, Maine, a state that had also gone for Gerald Ford in 1976.

In 1988, the Electoral votes from Indiana, home state of vice-president Dan Quayle, went to Bush, but Indiana has been as Republican as Minnesota has been Democratic - only Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has carried the state for the Democrats since 1936.

In 1992, Tennessee’s votes went to Bill Clinton, the one instance of a state departing from its recent electoral history.  However, it is not clear that Al Gore’s presence on the ticket swung votes to Clinton, who haled from next-door neighbor Arkansas.  At the time, there was some amount of hand-wringing about the lack of wisdom shown in selecting a vice-presidential candidate who bought no geographic balance to the ticket.  As Clinton won several states in the South - Kentucky, Georgia and Mississippi - that had voted Republican just four years before, the impact of Al Gore on the ticket seems minimal.

The 2000 selection of Dick Cheney as the running mate for George W. Bush added no votes from Wyoming, a state which had voted only once for a Democrat (again Lyndon Johnson in 1964) since Harry Truman.  Joe Lieberman’s Connecticut voted for the Democratic ticket - as it did in 1996 and 2004.

The final straw in this argument comes from the last election.  John Edwards’ inability to bring his home state of North Carolina to the Democratic column in 2004 did not quite cost John Kerry the election.  Those 15 electoral votes, cast for Kerry, would have left him 1 vote short.  But North Carolina voted Republican, as it had in every election since 1976. 

What is puzzling is the persistence of this election myth, since the myth itself is based on a flawed premise, from right there in the bellwether election of 1960.  Kennedy won 303 electoral votes that year; even if Nixon had carried Texas, its 25 electoral votes would have left him short. 

And so, as speculation over the reasons why Senators McCain and Obama should select a particular individual will always list a handful of reasons, the least important one should be geographic.  While it isn’t clear what impact the vice-presidential candidate has on voters, changing the electoral map is clearly not one of them.