Did Tim Kaine cost Hillary votes

[AltWorlder]

Nobody cares about the VPs.  People sometimes claim that a VP choice influenced their decision, but anyone who says so is lying to you and just presenting a post hoc justification for a decision that was already made, and made on (most likely) much more trivial factors.  Of course, people do not like to betray the fact that they aren't terribly sophisticated in their decision making, so they'll come up with all sorts of post hoc justifications to pretend like they were analyzing things during the campaign.

Any Progressive voter who stayed home because they were upset that the VP, whose only role in dictating policy is serving as a tie-breaker in the Senate, was insufficiently progressive would have found some other dumb reason to not vote for her even if she did choose a "progressive" VP.

I don't think people make a decision based on the VP specifically, but they do based on what the VP represents. If Clinton had selected say, Warren or Sanders, that would be a signal that she was going to be running an administration friendly to economic populist/progressive/leftist policies. Picking Kaine represents more generic Democratic business as usual.

[John Dule]

I doubt many people flipped to Trump just because of Kaine, but all the same, he absolutely bungled the VP debate.

[Mr. Smith]

After yesterday, it's pretty obvious Castro should've been picked.

That might well have been the difference of 210,000 votes...the other secret number that would've flipped Arizona and held Florida, regardless of the Midwest.

[RINO Tom]

After yesterday, it's pretty obvious Castro should've been picked.

That might well have been the difference of 210,000 votes...the other secret number that would've flipped Arizona and held Florida, regardless of the Midwest.

I've always found your insistence that the Democratic Party pursue a direction that would seemingly go in the opposite of your preferred politics interesting.

[Mr. Smith]

After yesterday, it's pretty obvious Castro should've been picked.

That might well have been the difference of 210,000 votes...the other secret number that would've flipped Arizona and held Florida, regardless of the Midwest.

I've always found your insistence that the Democratic Party pursue a direction that would seemingly go in the opposite of your preferred politics interesting.

Four things

1. I'm a pragmatist at heart, even if I don't see 95% of what the Democratic Party establishment and outlets like MSNBC considers "pragmatic" to be such.

2. I'm not above playing the devil's advocate once in awhile, and given what the normal, non IceSpear position of tactics seems to be, that is the DA position amongst the red-avvies.

3. I saw how the midterms went, where the gains and losses were, which didn't seem rooted in support/backlash against a candidates acting like a Democrat [Humphrey/LBJ/Sanders/Edwin Edwards] or a DINO [the general median since 1978 or so] exclusively, and that leads me to believe that perhaps that path isn't so opposite necessarily.

4. While I would've preferred Warren or Sanders, I recognize that the campaign thought trying to outdo Trump would come up something short and they thought a Silent Majority sort of strategy would've been better. Given how big immigration was as an issue, given the need for someone young and noncontroversial, and given the need to find someone that could really move turnout, I recognize that Castro wouldn't have bad.

[Kingpoleon]

Not so much as he didn’t give her the votes she needed. I agree, people like Julian Castro or Eric Garcetti would likely have netted her plenty of votes in Arizona and Florida. But really, Raul Grijalva would have done at least as much, if not more to actually mobilize the Hispanic vote in Arizona - while appealing to many supporters of Sanders. In Florida, however, it wouldn’t win her nearly as many votes as picking an actual Cuban-American, which wasn’t really an option for her, so I can’t see it winning her the state. Meanwhile, Anthony Foxx could have helped win the black vote in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and especially North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

Warren or Sanders, meanwhile, would have signaled to college-aged voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa that she was seriously committed to the left. A veep like Grijalva doing rallies with her and Sanders throughout the Midwest, Arizona, and Florida, would have cemented her positions in these places.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Nobody cares about the VPs.  People sometimes claim that a VP choice influenced their decision, but anyone who says so is lying to you and just presenting a post hoc justification for a decision that was already made, and made on (most likely) much more trivial factors.  Of course, people do not like to betray the fact that they aren't terribly sophisticated in their decision making, so they'll come up with all sorts of post hoc justifications to pretend like they were analyzing things during the campaign.

Any Progressive voter who stayed home because they were upset that the VP, whose only role in dictating policy is serving as a tie-breaker in the Senate, was insufficiently progressive would have found some other dumb reason to not vote for her even if she did choose a "progressive" VP.

I don't think people make a decision based on the VP specifically, but they do based on what the VP represents. If Clinton had selected say, Warren or Sanders, that would be a signal that she was going to be running an administration friendly to economic populist/progressive/leftist policies. Picking Kaine represents more generic Democratic business as usual.

True in many cases but I don't think this is applicable here.

If you chose a progressive to balance the ticket, there are two choices: Bernie, or not Bernie.

After the scorched Earth insurgent campaign Sanders ran between March and June, there's no reason to pick him as a VP. He'd easily overshadow Clinton and had the potential take control of the message entirely out of her hands. From the Clinton staff's perspective, there is little upside to Clinton doing this.

For a non-progressive pick like Elizabeth Warren, that argument maybe made sense in 2017 but in 2019 it's pretty obvious that a large degree of 2016 Bernie voters were not pro-Bernie/progressive per se but either incredibly distrustful of the Democratic Party establishment or harboring a visceral hatred of Clinton. The fact that right now Joe Biden, of all people, is doing so well with so many of the same Demographics is very telling. There's very little reason to expect that choosing a non-Bernie candidate would have won back this demographic for very long.

Put another way: do you really think jfern would have supported Clinton if Elizabeth Warren was the VP in 2016? I highly doubt it.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

He may have cost them votes not because of what he was but because of everything he wasn't.

[Mister Mets]

There may have been other candidates who would have done better.

In retrospect, she might have done better with Booker, Castro or O'Rourke.

Booker was younger and might have been more exciting to African American voters.

Castro was younger and could have helped with Hispanic voters.

O'Rourke could have added the excitement he generated in the 2018 Texas Senate race. It would have been an unconventional choice since he was a second-term Congressman, but it was the responsibility of national campaigns to be able to determine who the party's most promising individuals are.

[brucejoel99]

Kaine by no means single-handedly doomed Clinton's campaign, but his choice was emblematic of why Clinton lost. Her number one challenge was convincing the Obama coalition & voters in general that she represented real change in a year when the electorate wanted an outsider. The VP pick was the one big chance for her to signal that, even though Clinton herself was the consummate establishment politician, she had heard the message loud & clear and was ready to shake things up.

And Clinton had a number of strong choices to pick from, including Warren (who clearly wanted the job), Sanders (politically unthinkable but he would've unified the party & supercharged millennial turnout), Brown (Sanders-lite), or even somebody like Castro or Booker who at least would've added charisma to the ticket & helped to keep the Obama coalition engaged.

So what happened? Clinton chose not just another insider, but one utterly lacking in charisma, apparently for no other reason than that she just felt more comfortable with Kaine than with somebody like Warren, who would've been a disruptive presence in Clintonworld. To be fair, I know Tim Kaine is a nice guy who's highly qualified & would've helped with Senate outreach, but the VP doesn't necessarily need to fulfill that role or any particular role from a governing standpoint.

It was surreal seeing Democratic Party insiders & the Washington press all sing Kaine's praises, while meanwhile it was obvious to many young &/or left-leaning voters that this was a terrible choices for the reasons I mentioned above.

[Epaminondas]

Not a single person who flipped R in Luzerne PA was planning on voting for Clinton, and then changed their mind when she picked Kaine.  And I do not mean that as hyperbole, I mean that I'd be willing to gamble that quite literally zero people made that decision.

Have you ever counted votes? You get the craziest results. In every election, there's virtually no combination of candidates that doesn't appear once, however absurd.

It's a statistical certainty that a handful of voters in the 130M voters didn't pull the lever for Clinton because of Kaine.
The true question is whether they were significant or not.
(Probably not)

[morgankingsley]

I dont know about nationally, but in my town, and in immediate areas around, not a single person I know knew who Tim Kaine was, so the answer is no in my area

[Pandaguineapig]

He didn't cost her any votes, but didn't get her any either (outside of maybe a few in the Richmond area). He was the ultimate safe choice, a darling of the beltway media who would get glowing profiles from the WaPo and NYT after he was picked but was then immediately forgotten. Were there better potential picks? probably, but even his supposed mishaps (not initially being in line with the Clinton policy on the Hyde amendment, or his weak debate performance against Pence) didn't move any votes.

[Pandaguineapig]

While they may be important in sending a signal of what a campaign stands for, or in shoring up the weaknesses of the nominee, running mates rarely cause great movement one way or another. Even vp picks that are acknowledged to have been terrible in hindsight (like Edwards or Palin) likely didn't cost their respective tickets any states

[MarkD]

I doubt many people flipped to Trump just because of Kaine, but all the same, he absolutely bungled the VP debate.

I would certainly doubt that too. But the issue we are considering in this thread is not just how many voters (no particular ideology in our minds) might have switched to Trump because they didn't like either Clinton or Kaine. The issue is how many liberal voters might have switched to Jill Stein or simply didn't vote at all because they were uninspired by the Democratic ticket. Stein got 31,000 votes in Wisconsin while Clinton lost to Trump by 22,300. Stein got 49,900 votes in Pennsylvania while Clinton lost to Trump by 44,300. And Stein got 51,400 votes in Michigan while Clinton lost to Trump by a mere 10,700. Just like in 2000, Ralph Nader was a liberal spoiler for Al Gore, Stein was a liberal spoiler for Hilary Clinton, and if the latter had chosen a running mate much more liberal than Kaine, then maybe that would have helped shore up the liberal base for the Democrats.

[I Can Now Die Happy]

Fact of the matter is, the most prominent person who cost Hillary the election is Donald Trump, along with his unorthodox genius and unrelenting will in the face of the combined might of the Democratic AND Republican establishment. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

Hillary Clinton is viewed as an HP by most of America, including a swath of voters that gave her a plurality of the popular vote.  She was the first candidate to be an overwhelming favorite for the nomination despite being the subject of an active FBI investigation.  She ran a Girl Power campaign that managed to alienate just enough socially conservative union households to lose MI and WI and probably PA.  She WORKED at that.  She had arrogant snot-noses running her campaign, and Julian Assange's gift to America was to disclose how (amongst other things) the DNC fixed her nomination and folks like Podesta and Palmeiri actually discussed the feasibility of infiltrating the Catholic Church in an attempt to liberalize its doctrines. 

Donald Trump was rude and crude on a number of levels during the campaign, but he didn't call Hillary's supporters "Deplorable".  That was a legendary show of disrespect for ordinary voters, and, indeed, Hillary intended that comment to apply to the average Trump voter.  That was an unforced error on Hillary's part; one of many.  When Trump uttered "Such a NASTY woman!" in one of the debates, it rang true with a swath of voters who, normally, would have been shocked by Trump's comments and antics.  Hillary did it all to herself.  Tim Kaine didn't have much to do with it, and (surprisingly) Donald Trump had very little to do with it as well.  Hillary ran her own campaign into the ground, and with very little help.

[Beet]

No but he didn't gain her anything. Picking another Eastern Senator from a state adjacent to DC, and a former DNC chair whose chief of staff was her former deputy campaign manager (although people hardly knew the last detail) at that, was a reflection of her hubristic insider campaign and gave off the wrong vibe. This especially as the announcement was made on the verge of the opening of the Convention while Wikileaks ensured the Sanders rage would be at its peak, and DWS was booed offstage unable to open her own convention. Picking someone like Brown or Merkley could have at least brought some semblance of unity. But it was more a symptom of how her whole campaign gave off the wrong vibe, than any fault of Kaine himself.

If Kaine made any mistake it was too many smirks during the VP debate, and somehow letting Pence get away with playing the Russia hawk and accusing Obama of being too soft on Russia.

[SN2903]

He probably helped a little in Virginia but overall I don't think he mattered that much in terms of the outcome.

[538Electoral]

Without Kaine, I'd say Clinton only wins Virginia by 2-3%.

[Plankton5165]

I remember hoping Clinton would not pick Tim Kaine as the running mate.

[NeverAgainsSock]

I love Kaine and was very excited that he was the Veep nominee. And I second what everyone has said that VPs don't either directly or significantly affect people's votes.

However, as Beet said, he didn't add anything. She was seen as a near 3 decade-long establishment insider, and picking someone also seen as an insider and former head of the "establishment" didn't add a whole lot to what she was pulling.

Additionally, I think the the indirect perception effect was significant not only to what everyone has been saying about increasing her insider view against the perceptions of Bernie and Trump. While I don't think Kaine affected any voter, I think the amplified insider-establishment image may have contributed to some non-voters/third-party folks. If Brown has been the veep and campaigned hard in WI, MI, PA, and OH, as he said he planned to if chosen, I think there may have been a shift not only in perception of the top of the ticket, but also actual vote count.

Summary: Picking Kaine amplified the view of Hillary many already had, and may have shifted votes. Brown would have been better!

[Leinad]

Probably not too many.

I see a lot of people talking about how not too many people switch from Clinton to Trump because of Kaine. Obviously--this is not ground-breaking analysis. I think the idea of Kaine was to take suburban votes (the people privileged enough to care about civility and stability over actual issues) and be a little more appealing to Catholics (I guess buying into the idea she was going to bleed Catholics because of that email Fox was whining about or whatever. I guess it's just the conventional wisdom that you have to have one Catholic on your ticket nowadays. I don't think regular people have cared about if the VP is Catholic or not in a while, but no one asked me.)

The thing is, millions upon millions of Americans could've voted but didn't. A lot of them probably weren't going to no matter what, but there were probably several million who were D vs. nothing/third party or R vs. nothing/third party. Probably for weird reasons, and probably Kaine didn't matter too much. But people make a severe error to assume all voters are solid D, solid R, or Pragmatic Centrists:).

Again, Kaine didn't matter too much--and that's the issue with Kaine. It wasn't that people were like "ew, Kaine." I'd wager a guess just about anyone who hates Tim Kaine hates Hillary Clinton more. The problem is that basically everyone who's a big Tim Kaine fan was already going to vote for Hillary Clinton no matter what. A good VP pick adds to the coalition. (An example is Pence for Trump--a lot of people felt way more safe about Trump with Pence--negating his "New York Values" i.e. making sure he's bigoted enough-- and people who Trump brought in weren't as put off as if he picked, say, Rubio.) A bad VP takes away from the coalition--frankly I think this would've happened with Hillary/Bernie. The fraction of voters who defected from Clinton because Sanders lost would've mostly just been like "wow, Bernie's another shill " and the neoliberal suburbanites would've been worried Clinton was wavering on her steadfast positions of bombing the scary countries and ignoring wealth inequality. Warren or Brown would've been a more coherent pick.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Kaine was picked to help Clinton as veep in the White House. There was no electoral consideration in it because Clinton thought the presidency was already hers.

[Lincoln Republican]

Hillary Clinton was the architect of her own downfall.

The only thing that would have given her the win in 2016, I believe, would have been convincing the rust belt and key Midwestern states that she understands them, that she is mindful of their plight, and that she would bring jobs back.

She would have to have spent much, much more time in this area.

The only two recent Vice Presidential candidates to have actually helped the Presidential candidate were Lyndon B Johnson in 1960 with John F Kennedy, and Mike Pence in 2016 with Donald Trump.

Johnson had been instrumental in swinging crucial southern states to Kennedy and the Pence pick told evangelicals that it was OK to vote for Trump.

Of course Kaine did not cost Hillary the election but I cannot see where he helped her either.