Paul Ryan also has pretty good favorables here.
Paul Ryan is the one Wisconsin Republican who will have a home state bounce at the national level. Walker won't. Johnson won't. Duffy won't. He's simply in another league above the rest of the Wisconsin GOP in favorability.
He didn't get one in 2012.
Nope he didn't. But WI did trend toward the Republicans with him on the ticket, presumably moreso than it would have without him as the VP nominee.
Not enough.
Paul Ryan has never won Wisconsin in a statewide election and probably can't. The last three sitting Representatives as nominees for Vice-President (Ryan 2012, Kemp 1996, and Miller in 1964) did not win their states. Kemp was very good. Dick Cheney had run a statewide race and won his state; Wyoming has but one Congressional seat. But Wyoming offers three of the easiest electoral votes in America.
The usual penultimate office for a President of the United States being elected President is either Vice-President (GHW Bush, Lyndon Johnson), Governor (George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan), or US Senate (Barack Obama, Richard Nixon, John Kennedy). The heroic leader of a successful military campaign (Dwight Eisenhower) is a rarity; since the death of Norman Schwarzkopf (who never ran for elective office), nobody has that chance for the foreseeable future.
I do not say that cabinet secretaries, Representatives, or big-city mayors (just think about it: the Mayors of Los Angeles and New York City have responsibility over the welfare of more people than does the Governor of Arkansas) would be poor Presidents; they just can't win. I am tempted to believe that someone running a Presidential race needs to have won a statewide race to have an idea of how to win nationwide.
In 2012 Paul Ryan ended up protecting his own House seat.
