How come the President's approval ratings don't necessarily reflect on the VP?
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  How come the President's approval ratings don't necessarily reflect on the VP?
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Author Topic: How come the President's approval ratings don't necessarily reflect on the VP?  (Read 1552 times)
Bo
Rochambeau
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« on: March 21, 2010, 04:43:07 PM »

when the VP is running for President?

For instance, Ike's and Clinton's approvals were in the low 60s on election day 1960/2000, yet their VPs still managed to lose (by extremely narrow margins). On the other hand, Reagan's approvals were in the low 50s on election day 1988, yet Bush Sr. managed to win in an electoral landslide. The only election where the President's approval rating translated well on to the VP were in 1968, when LBJ's approval rating was in the low 40s on election day, and Humphrey managed to lose (albeit much more narrowly than he should have due to Wallace taking a lot of votes from Nixon).
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President Mitt
Giovanni
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« Reply #1 on: March 21, 2010, 04:58:22 PM »

I would say they almost always do, it was bad campaigns on those two candidates' part that caused their defeat.
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WillK
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« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2010, 05:00:05 PM »

when the VP is running for President?

For instance, Ike's and Clinton's approvals were in the low 60s on election day 1960/2000, yet their VPs still managed to lose (by extremely narrow margins). On the other hand, Reagan's approvals were in the low 50s on election day 1988, yet Bush Sr. managed to win in an electoral landslide. The only election where the President's approval rating translated well on to the VP were in 1968, when LBJ's approval rating was in the low 40s on election day, and Humphrey managed to lose (albeit much more narrowly than he should have due to Wallace taking a lot of votes from Nixon).

One reason is who the opponent in the election was.  Dukakis was a terrible candidate; Bush and Kennedy were favored by the media.
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pragmatic liberal
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« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2010, 03:08:11 PM »

Incumbent VPs have a few handicaps.

After one party has held the WH for eight years, and especially when there is no incumbent president running, the pendulum effect kicks in and there's a sense among the electorate that it's "time for a change." The Vice President is someone who was first introduced to the national electorate eight years before and can seem like a bit of a stale figure.

Still, the "time for a change" factor can in theory be overcome, especially if the outgoing president is popular, but the vice president is often poorly placed to take advantage of the administration's achievements for a couple of reasons. Dick Cheney notwithstanding, even "influential" vice presidents like Gore are hardly the most public or influential of presidential advisers and what influence they do exert often comes behind the scenes. Thus vice presidents suffer in public perceptions both because they don't get enough credit for the administration's achievements and because by taking on lower-level initiatives within the WH, they don't develop a strong, independent public identity.

So in the end, vice presidents wind up being too well-known to take advantage of the desire for a "fresh face" yet too anonymous to claim much credit for the incumbent administration's achievements. As a result, even when the incumbent is popular, incumbent vice presidents are at a narrow disadvantage.

For this reason, I sometimes wonder if the parties are better off NOT running the vice president when the president retires.
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« Reply #4 on: March 25, 2010, 08:31:34 PM »

I once read a book published during the Carter administration that suggested that Vice Presidents would have all the positives of incumbent Presidents and none of the negatives, and that the Vice President would thus almost always win the Presidency.

Needless to say, that didn't happen.
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Bo
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« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2010, 08:55:13 PM »

I once read a book published during the Carter administration that suggested that Vice Presidents would have all the positives of incumbent Presidents and none of the negatives, and that the Vice President would thus almost always win the Presidency.

Needless to say, that didn't happen.

It's interesting that this book was published under Carter, since Nixon had already lost in 1960 despite Ike's large popularity.
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Associate Justice PiT
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« Reply #6 on: March 26, 2010, 12:56:10 AM »

I once read a book published during the Carter administration that suggested that Vice Presidents would have all the positives of incumbent Presidents and none of the negatives, and that the Vice President would thus almost always win the Presidency.

Needless to say, that didn't happen.

     Really? Was the author not aware that Martin Van Buren had been the last sitting Vice-President to be elected President at the time? Smiley
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« Reply #7 on: April 04, 2010, 10:10:59 AM »

     Really? Was the author not aware that Martin Van Buren had been the last sitting Vice-President to be elected President at the time? Smiley

But Nixon had been the first Vice President to try and campaign straight from that office into the Presidency since Van Buren; a lot had changed in the 140 years since Van Buren ran.
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Bo
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« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2010, 12:33:24 PM »

     Really? Was the author not aware that Martin Van Buren had been the last sitting Vice-President to be elected President at the time? Smiley

But Nixon had been the first Vice President to try and campaign straight from that office into the Presidency since Van Buren; a lot had changed in the 140 years since Van Buren ran.

Yes, and Nixon also lost that election despite Ike consistently having around 60% approvals.
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Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers
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« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2010, 02:04:35 PM »

The first Media VP was Al gore and he went in front of the cameras and didn't do so well at first. Most of the VP's were seen as running mates always doing what they were told not particular a candidate for office unless a president died in office.  Natually the VP doesn't get credit for the good things the president does but always gets blamed for the bad things especially in the cases of Dick Cheney in Iraq and Al Gore with the lying. And it continued, with Sarah Palin getting the blame for the failing campaign of McCain.
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phk
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« Reply #10 on: May 02, 2010, 03:20:39 PM »

when the VP is running for President?

For instance, Ike's and Clinton's approvals were in the low 60s on election day 1960/2000, yet their VPs still managed to lose (by extremely narrow margins). On the other hand, Reagan's approvals were in the low 50s on election day 1988, yet Bush Sr. managed to win in an electoral landslide. The only election where the President's approval rating translated well on to the VP were in 1968, when LBJ's approval rating was in the low 40s on election day, and Humphrey managed to lose (albeit much more narrowly than he should have due to Wallace taking a lot of votes from Nixon).

One reason is who the opponent in the election was.  Dukakis was a terrible candidate; Bush and Kennedy were favored by the media.
I am surprised that Bush was favored by the media. Watch some of the 1984 election night coverage and you can see that the media was against Reagan...but that did no harm to him lol

Bush had a much better relationship with the press corps, while Gore was cold to them.
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Derek
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« Reply #11 on: May 03, 2010, 12:05:35 PM »

Ppl like change in moderations. Eisenhower could've gotten Nixon into office in 1960 though and chose to stay out of the election. As for Bush, he ran as a centrist in 2000 who gave his own ideas on the democratic issues so that helped him too.
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