Washington: In the United States political circles, conventional wisdom dictates that voters only care about the candidate atop the presidential ticket, not the running mate.
While vice presidential picks can play a role in public opinion, voters cast ballots mostly for the headliners — or so the argument goes.
In the 2024 presidential race, that means much of the attention will fall to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Democratic and Republican nominees, respectively.
But as Harris zips across the country on a campaign blitz, she is poised to put that logic to the test.
She is campaigning side by side with her newly minted running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, stopping in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday.
His avuncular personality, progressive messaging and middle-class Midwestern roots seem well-suited to answer specific Democratic needs: The party needs to shore up its progressive base and shed the shroud of coastal elitism if it hopes to reclaim the White House in November.
But take that optimism about Walz with a grain — or a shaker full — of salt, said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University.
“You can take all the punditry on the effect of the Walz pick on the election’s outcome and do with it what the great philosopher David Hume said you should do with works of superstition: Consign it to the flames,” Lichtman said.
“There is no evidence that a VP pick influences the outcomes of a presidential election.”
Still, with an unconventional presidential race unfolding, some analysts question how Walz’s selection might be perceived among voters over the long term — and whether he may indeed buoy Harris’s prospects.
Walz’s appointment to the Democratic ticket on Tuesday came as the latest chapter in an unusual campaign season.
Less than three weeks ago, the race seemed destined to pit two of the oldest nominees in presidential history against one another on election day: Trump and the incumbent president, Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump had already notched his share of firsts during the presidential race. In May, the Republican leader became the first US presidential candidate ever to be convicted on criminal charges. He is also the only former president in recent history to mount a serious effort to overturn a previous election loss.
But a new twist in the election saga came on July 21, when President Biden dropped out of the race after mounting concerns about his age.
Biden had been the Democratic frontrunner. Never in modern history had the presumptive nominee dropped out so late in the race. His decision upended the Democratic ticket with just months until the vote.
But Biden’s departure paved the way for Vice President Harris to lead the Democratic ticket. Her choice to pick Walz as a running mate came on the same day as she was officially certified to be the party nominee.
Lichtman, the American University professor, explained that Walz ticked a number of boxes for the Harris campaign.
A vice presidential candidate must have at least a rudimentary compatibility with their running mate and a level of experience to show they would be able to fill the president’s seat, Lichtman said. Otherwise, the running mate could reflect poorly on the presidential candidate’s decision-making skills.
Other than that, vice presidential picks are often sidelined or dismissed as less relevant to political campaigns.
Trump himself espoused that view. In July, he selected JD Vance, a 40-year-old senator from Ohio, to be his running mate. But when asked about his decision last week, Trump offered a startling moment of candour.
“Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact,” Trump said.
“You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion as to — like you’re having it on the Democrat side — who it’s going to be. And then that dies down. And it’s all about the presidential pick.
Barbara Perry, a professor in presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, acknowledged Trump’s position is “not totally incorrect” historically. But she questioned whether that history will apply in a race that continues to veer into uncharted territory.
Perry added that history has been an unreliable predictor in modern US presidential races, which are increasingly decided by razor-thin margins. In the last six presidential elections, just one race — 2008’s match-up between Barack Obama and John McCain — was decided by more than five percentage points nationally.
In two of those last six elections, the victorious candidates lost the national popular vote, a phenomenon that had not happened since 1888, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
That includes George W Bush’s win over Al Gore and Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. In both cases, the Republican candidate prevailed over the Democratic one.
