Vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance gave his speech at the RNC Wednesday night. Trump’s running mate joined the U.S. Senate representing Ohio in January of last year and never held a political office before that. Now that the 39-year-old has been catapulted onto the national stage, will Trump’s VP pick have the power to bring in any voters or end up costing the Republicans votes?
Christopher Devine, associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton and co-author of Do Running Mates Matter? The Influence of Vice Presidential Candidates in Presidential Elections, says J.D. Vance is a conspicuous pick who lacks experience more so than any recent running mate.
"J.D. Vance, I've described him, and I'm reluctant to say it but I just think it's true — he's the least qualified vice presidential candidate in modern history. Even to a greater degree than Sarah Palin, who by the way, had served for nearly a decade in local and state office before she was governor for two years at the time of her election," notes Devine.
Now that Trump's pick is official, Devine believes that after Vance gets scrutinized for his political positions, people will then come around to discussing the question: is Vance actually ready for this?
"It’s not as clear from his record what to expect from him, and so voters typically want someone who has more experience and clearer qualifications. Someone they can be sure that, in this case, six months from now could take over the vice presidency or even the presidency if necessary," notes Devine. "And I think Trump passing over [more experienced] people, ... I think that it might bring up questions about how serious is [Trump] about governing this time around? Or is he going to be focused on kind of personal politics, revenge and retributions as he's talked about at some times? I think that's a little of a wildcard for Americans."
While Vance's reception has been warm from delegates inside of the convention, that popularity will most likely not carry over to the broader public, he says.
"Vice presidential candidates over time have become less popular, they're less of a way of appealing to Americans kind of broadly. They're really popular within their own party," Devine says according to his data research on vice presidential candidates from 1968-2020.
He notes that Mike Pence and Kamala Harris were the most popular running mates within their own party, but were the least popular with the other party and with independents they were the second least popular.
Devine says this speaks to an overall trend of loving your own party's running mate, but this leaves people in the middle out. "Instead of the VP being some chance to peel people off with a more popular figure, instead they become so closely aligned with the presidential candidate that people kind of throw up their hands and say, ‘Well that’s not doing it for me either,’" he says.
"Vice presidential candidates over time have become less popular, they're less of a way of appealing to Americans kind of broadly. They're really popular within their own party."
No mater the party, Devine says that there are three different ways that running mates could impact how people vote. The first being direct effects — the idea that because you either really like or dislike a running mate, you are more likely to vote for or against that ticket. However, Devine notes there's not actually much evidence of this direct effect.
"You hear people say for example, 'Hey, I was thinking of voting for John McCain, but then he picked Sarah Palin and I really didn't like her so I didn't vote for the ticket' ... that's what motivated them. But from a political science standpoint, we often find that it's not clear."
The second effect Devine has observed is what he refers to as targeted effects — that a running mate can help appeal to a certain group of people, such as Tim Kaine appealing to Catholic voters in 2016 or the hope that J.D. Vance will also appeal to Catholic voters.
"When you look at the data for it, we show, I think, pretty clearly that there was not a movement towards those candidates, their ticket," says Devine. "The only exception, by the way, is Kamala Harris in 2020. ... She did seem to help with women voters and Black voters, but not by that much."
Where running mates really matter is what Devine refers to as indirect effects.
"[Running mates] can influence how people think about the presidential candidate, because that's who they're actually voting for," explains Devine. "I mean sure, we're electing this ticket but who's going to choose their less preferred presidential candidate just so I can get that vice president in office? I don't think many people do that. So they're focused on the presidential candidate, but their sense of who that person is could be shaped by the choice of a running mate because that's often called the 'first presidential act.' That's a major personnel decision that they make during the campaign and it just tells you a lot about who the presidential candidate is."
Devine says so while running mates matter, don't overstate things. "They're probably not gonna be game changers. That's just unrealistic expectation," he says. Outside of the Republican coalition, Devine believes there isn't any additional appeal to Vance that people weren't already getting from Trump.
"You also don't have that appeal of demonstrated competence in the job, because [Vance] is relatively lacking in experience. And it's not that people necessarily vote for a VP ... but I think people do respond to a failure on the presidential candidate's part to pick someone who meets kind of their normal standards."
The overall unpopularity of running mates if reflective of what Devine describes as the "Veepstakes" in modern politics. With direct primaries resulting in knowing who the presidential candidate is before a political convention, the suspense of matching and scrutinizing a potential running mate is also muted.
"It's not a sweepstakes. They're not just getting lucky and getting picked for this, but it kind of fits with what I've described as this game, like quality to discussing this actually very serious, very important choice. Where you know, it's almost like this parlor game that people play and we're just seeing its conclusion now, where the speculation has ended."
Devine also adds that presidential tickets are more about who might help someone win an election rather than how can a running mate help someone govern. "I think it's really unfortunate that in that process, there's not nearly enough attention to who's qualified to be vice president," he says.
While vice presidents don't have a lot of day-to-day power, VP's have become to be informally accepted as major players in an administration over the last half century.
"They have a very important role in the White House, not because they have a certain power they act on their own really, but because they have the president's ear typically. We should take them seriously, we should factor them into our choice between the presidential tickets — it's not just the presidential candidates, it's their vice presidential candidates, too."
