The Contemporary Effects of Vice-Presidential Nominees: Sarah Palin and the 2008 Presidential Campaign

Abstract

This paper reviews the politics of vice-presidential selection from the point of view of both the scholar and campaign strategist. Using John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, we first explore academic theories of vice-presidential selection and assess the ways Palin either succeeds or fails to meet the expectations of those theories. We go on to explore the specific factors the McCain campaign considered when selecting a vice-presidential nominee and assess Palin's performance in addressing those factors. We conclude with a discussion of Palin's impact on the outcome of the 2008 election.

KEYWORDS:

• 2008 presidential election
• campaigns
• elections
• John McCain
• running mate
• Sarah Palin
• vice-presidential candidates

A previous version of this article was presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. The authors would like to thank Joe Giammo for his helpful comments, as well as James Carville, Jim Gerstein, and Democracy Corps for providing the survey data and Mary Matalin and Steve Schmidt for the interview data used in this article. The authors gratefully acknowledge research support from the Newcomb College Institute at Tulane University.

Notes

Data are logit coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. Dependent variable is coded 1 if respondents indicated they voted for McCain and 0 if they voted for Obama. Voters for non–major party candidates were excluded from the analysis.

^a Statistically significant at p < .01.

^b Statistically significant at p < .10.

^c Statistically significant at p < .05.

^d The change in probability was calculated by estimating the probability of a McCain vote with the Palin thermometer set to 60 and subtracting the estimated probability of a McCain vote with the Palin thermometer set to 40 (holding all other values at their means). This calculation was performed in Stata/SE10.0 with the prvalue command from the SPost Collection (Long and Freese, 2005).

See, for example, Cook (2008).

Both McCain and Palin would be considered conservatives, but the two candidates exhibited important policy differences on issues such as a Constitutional ban on gay marriage, energy policy, sex education in schools, and foreign policy toward North Korea.

A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 likely voters on September 1, 2008, found that only 29 percent of respondents believed Palin was “ready to lead,” while 48% believed she was “not ready.”

A list of polls used in the subsequent analyses is presented in Appendix A.

A LexisNexis search of major U.S. and world publications finds 934 hits for a search of “Palin and maverick.” Typical examples of such press coverage include Thompson (2008) and Safire (2008).

PUMA stands for “party unity my ass.”

Comparable data on men are presented in Figure 4 in Appendix B.

As a point of reference, John Kerry won women voters in 2004 51 percent to 48 percent (CNN, 2004).

Details of the four Democracy Corps surveys used in this analysis are provided in Appendix A. Democracy Corps survey data were used for this analysis because it was the only polling firm that asked thermometer questions for both Bush and Palin at multiple points during the fall campaign.

Voters for non–major party candidates were excluded from the analysis.

The race variable was a dummy coded 0 if the respondent was white and 1 if the respondent was not white.

Further details on the probability calculation are provided in the footnote below Table 1.

We conclude that Palin managed to rally the Republican base, yet our analysis of presidential voting in the American National Election Studies concludes that evaluations of Palin did not have an impact on Republican voters. We believe that these facts are not contradictory. Indeed, we argue that the nomination of Palin served as a signal to Republicans and helped warm them to the McCain-Palin ticket. By the end of the campaign, however, it was Republicans' party identification (and distaste for Obama)—and not their specific evaluations of Palin—that had an impact on their decision to vote for McCain.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian J. Brox

Brian Brox is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Tulane University.

Madison L. Cassels

Madison Cassels is a candidate for Juris Doctor at Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law.