By Rylie Oswald
Christopher J. Devine, coauthor of Do Running Mates Matter? with Kyle C. Kopko, speaks about the impact vice presidential candidates have on elections. Devine also discusses the reasoning behind Trump’s and Harris’s running-mate picks.
How do running mates shape an election for presidential candidates?
Running mates are important, but their importance is overstated at times. People think that a running mate is going to fundamentally change the race—that they could easily deliver a certain state or a certain block of voters in a way that would potentially be decisive. It can matter at the margins, but we shouldn’t expect really dramatic effects. The way they matter is in terms of changing how people are thinking about the presidential candidate.
“Running mates are important, but their importance is overstated at times.”
They could affect how people think about the leadership skills of the presidential candidate. Whether they have good judgment, for example. It could even shape perceptions of their political ideology. If there’s some deficiency in the candidate—if they’re not very experienced, or they have some other weakness, even a weakness within their own party—then the running mate could be a good way of balancing that out and reassuring voters that their perceived weaknesses are being addressed.
What qualities should a vice presidential candidate have to complement the presidential candidate?
The first priority is credibility. You can call it experience, and it’s just about the most important thing: how [a candidate’s] competence is demonstrated through their public comments and their conduct on the campaign trail. That’s one thing we show looking at some polling data that asks voters about a lot of different things that they might want to see in a running mate, but the only thing they really consistently care about—care a lot about—is whether the person is credible as a potential vice president, potentially as commander in chief, if something should happen to the president. If that’s not being addressed through this choice, then I’m not sure voters really care about what comes next.
How important are demographics, experience, and political alignment in shaping the effectiveness of a running mate?
The demographics can make a difference, but they usually don’t. We have looked at this in terms of some limited cases, because, for example, Kamala Harris was only the third woman to run for the vice presidency, first Black person run for the vice presidency, first Asian American to run for it. There is another vice president of color, Charles Curtis, who was Native American, in 1928–32, but otherwise no people of color were running for the vice presidency.
“We couldn’t find any clear evidence of increased support from women for the ticket based on those elections.”
The book came out in 2020, so we couldn’t study Harris yet. We’ve done some follow-up analysis on that, and what we found in the book was that there was really no clear evidence of that kind of demographic effect, with the two women who had run to that point—Geraldine Ferraro in ’84 and Sarah Palin in ’08. We couldn’t find any clear evidence of increased support from women for the ticket based on those elections. We did later find some for Harris that she was a little more influential, possibly for her ticket among Black voters and women voters, but it really wasn’t much of an effect.
How do you think JD Vance and Tim Walz can impact the election outcome for their respective running mates?
I think they will have some effect. It probably won’t be a very big one, but they could be consequential. And again, experience is always the first thing I’m thinking of, not because it will have a dramatic effect on the race. When running mates really have an effect on voters, it’s because they’re [either] impressive or really not impressive in terms of their qualifications.
In this case, I think that Harris made the best choice she could have among the finalists in terms of experience, because Walz was the only one who had the executive experience as a governor at the state level, but also the foreign policy experience as member of Congress. The other [people] being considered didn’t really have any executive experience but had the foreign policy experience, or in Mark Kelly’s case, had foreign policy but not executive experience. So that’s a good pick for her. I think it at least says to voters that she’s thinking seriously about governance, which kind of makes sense as a sitting vice president. She appreciates that the role is consequential.
“Experience is always the first thing I’m thinking of.”
In Trump’s case, I don’t think he demonstrates that [same thought] with the Vance pick. I think it is a really poor pick in terms of Vance’s credibility. He is the least qualified vice presidential candidate in modern history. Sarah Palin was as new of a governor as he is a senator, not quite two years, but she had also served for a decade in state and local office before that first government position. Vance has only run one race before for Senate, and I think we’re seeing that play out in the campaign trail, that he’s making more mistakes than a more seasoned candidate might make. I’m skeptical that voters are going to see him as someone who is ready to be vice president just in about six months from now.
How do you think Vance and Walz compare to past running mates in terms of experience and strategic value?
Vance reminds me of John Edwards in 2004. He was really popular at the time, but we don’t look back on him very fondly now. He’s someone who does not seem like he would have been a good vice president. In his case, he had run for the presidency that year in ’04 and did surprisingly well for a freshman senator, but he was someone who had only run for one office. He was a freshman senator like Vance. He was in his sixth year instead of his second, so he had more experience in that regard, and had run a national campaign.
I’m not sure Edwards did much damage to John Kerry, but he’s someone who probably would not have served very well in the vice presidency. Even Kerry himself basically said as much in his memoirs. It’s very clear that he regretted choosing Edwards. He had seen some signs of the character issues that later became a problem with Edwards. Also, Kerry probably recognized that that was really an electoral pick, that was someone chose to help win the election, rather than to help him govern. If he had gone for the latter, he would have chosen someone else.
“Walz reminds me more of Mike Pence as a candidate in 2016, someone who has political experience.”
Walz reminds me more of Mike Pence as a candidate in 2016, someone who has political experience, and Kamala Harris certainly has political experience. But among the choices that Trump had in 2016 [including Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich], Pence, in some way, seemed like the steadiest pick, and he was someone who was very credible in terms of his experience. Like Walz, Pence was a sitting governor, so you have executive experience, but he also previously served for a decade in Congress, so you have that credibility in terms of some breadth of experience.
Why do you think Trump and Harris chose the running mates that they did?
I think Trump’s pick was predictable. It’s what I predicted, based on how he saw the Pence pick. Pence was someone who was extremely loyal to Trump throughout the campaign in 2016 and throughout the Trump administration. But it wasn’t enough, because Pence demonstrated on January 6, 2021, that there were lines he would not cross for Donald Trump. And Trump’s reaction to that was not one of understanding or appreciation or anything along those lines, but rather it was absolute disgust. He saw that as unforgivable, as betrayal, in spite of all that Pence had done before that.
“I think Trump’s pick was predictable.”
What it told me is that, given the chance to do this all over again, he would pick someone who would not say no to him, even under extreme circumstances like what Trump was asking Pence to do in inventing new constitutional powers for himself on January 6. I think he wants someone like JD Vance, who is going to back up whatever Trump says. We’ve even seen that in this campaign, where Vance backs Trump up even when he questions Kamala Harris’s racial identity and says other outlandish things. Whether it’s something that Trump’s saying or whether it’s an action that he would ask a Vice President Vance to take, he wants someone who will say yes to him no matter the ask.
As for Walz, the initial reports suggest that his audition was really impressive to Harris and to her campaign staff. He seemed like someone who could be a really effective communicator. That was one consideration. I’m not sure she was sold on the home state advantage. Based on our research, she’d be right not to put much stock in that. But the other top contenders seem to have been Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Mark Kelly of Arizona. Even though they had some good credentials, plus the fact they were from swing states, I’m just not sure she believed much in that, and she chose someone who, although had this Midwestern appeal, clearly wasn’t there to deliver Minnesota. I don’t think that was decisive in a way that some people thought it should be.
“There are times where we see that how well a potential VP pick gets along with the presidential candidate can be decisive.“
[Walz’s] experience is probably attractive as well, and I think she just had good chemistry with him. That is something that matters. There are times where we see that how well a potential VP pick gets along with the presidential candidate can be decisive. We saw that, for example, in 2012 when Romney chose Paul Ryan. I think it was a mix of all those factors for Harris. All those things seem to add up to someone that she could rely on as a governing partner.
