Assessing Kamala Harris’ running mate choices

On the evening of July 22, 2024, Vice President Kamala D. Harris secured enough endorsements from delegates to the Democratic National Convention to become the de facto 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. Three days later, Harris announced she would choose a vice-presidential running mate by August 7.

During the early summers of 2016 and 2020, I constructed Microsoft Excel worksheets to compare possible Democratic vice-presidential running mates for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., respectively, on a range of demographic, government experience and electoral strength components. After Biden’s worrisome debate performance on June 27, the possibility Biden would end his reelection campaign in favor of someone like Harris led me to construct a new worksheet.

As in previous years, I excluded anyone:

Born outside of the United States, citing the “natural born citizen” requirement of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America
Under the age of 35, citing the same requirements
From the state of California, citing the requirement in Amendment XII that the vice president “shall not be an inhabitant of the same state as” the president.

The 2024 vice-presidential worksheet thus contains data on 143 candidates, including:

39 current (35) or former (3) members of the United States House of Representatives (“House Member”)
49 current (47) or former (2) United States Senators (“Senator”) who caucus(ed) with the Democrats[1]
28 current (22) or former (6) governors
17 current (16) or former (former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro) Cabinet-level officials
10 current (6) or former (4) mayors

In short, I included every current qualifying Democratic governor, Senator, Cabinet member and big-city mayor, as well as some who only recently left their positions. I also included every House Member from the seven states most likely to determine the Electoral College winner: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as Colorado’s Jason Crow, Texas’ Joaquin Castro, and former House Members Conor Lamb (PA), Beto O’Rourke (TX) and Tim Ryan (OH).

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Traditionally, there are three types of vice-presidential running mates: July, who help to unify a political party divided by ideology and/or region; November, who help the ticket win the election by delivering a key state or demographic group; and January, who help the president govern. These categories, of course, are not mutually exclusive.

More broadly, the running mate provides some form of “balance” to the presidential candidate. Thus, in 2008, Democratic Illinois Senator Barack Obama chose Biden, then a Senator from Delaware. The young half-African-American Obama had only been in the Senate since January 2005. The older white Biden, by contrast, had been in the Senate since January 1973, had served as Chair of the Foreign Affairs and Judiciary Committees, and had run for president twice himself. Choosing Biden reassured voters that a steady hand would be in the White House. Similarly, in 2000, Republican Texas Governor George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney of Wyoming – a former House Member, White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense – for the same reasons.

Harris, meanwhile, is a 59-year-old woman of Indian and Jamaican descent, who served four years in the Senate before becoming Vice President. She was also California’s Attorney General and San Francisco’s District Attorney. She thus does not need a “January” pick beyond the minimal threshold for being “ready on day one” to assume the presidency should something happen to Harris. The party is also remarkably united behind Harris, mitigating a “July” pick. Thus, what seems most likely is a “November” choice – a younger white man from a swing (or Republican) state with sufficient governmental experience. I emphasize “younger” because Biden’s age (he will turn 82 on November 20, 2024) was a significant drag on his reelection prospects.

To assess Harris’ possible running mates, I first ranked them in three broad categories: demographic balance, government experience, and electoral strengths and weaknesses.

Demographic balance.

Gender. I assigned 25 points for being male (n=92) and -50 points for being female (51).

Age. In a campaign focused on “passing the torch,” I assign the following point values to candidates.

35-59 (n=57): 60-Age
60-69 (41): (60-Age)*2
70-79 (41): (60-Age)*3
80-84 (4): (60-Age)*5

This measure penalizes being older 2-5 times as much as it rewards being younger, and it ranges from 29 for 36-year-old Pennsylvania House Member Summer Lee to -120 for 84-year-old former Vermont Senator Pat Leahy.

Race/Ethnicity. To balance Harris being of southeast Asian and Jamaican descent, I assigned points as follows.

White (n=106): 25
Native American (1): 0
Latina/o (8) -10
Arabic (1) -10
Asian (3) -25
Black (24): -50

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is Native American, which I decided was balance-neutral. Otherwise, I kind of split the difference for a race/ethnicity other than white (balance) or Asian/black (not balance). I assigned 15 points to New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, whose father is Latino and whose mother is white. Michigan House Member Rashida Tlaib is of Palestinian descent.

Sexual orientation: On the (unfortunate) assumption it is still a political liability in 2024, I subtracted 25 points for being openly LGBTQ+. This included four women (Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey) and three men (Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Wisconsin House Member Marc Pocan, Colorado Governor Jared Polis).

TOTAL. The sum of these three measures ranges from -126 (North Carolina House Member Alma Adams[2]) to 78 (Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff[3]). The top 10 candidates in this category are listed in Table 1:

Table 1: Top 10 2024 Democratic Vice-Presidential candidates by Demographic Balance

Name	Gender	Age	Ethnicity	LGBTQ+	TOTAL
Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff	Male	37	White	No	78
Former Pennsylvania House Member Conor Lamb	Male	40	White	No	75
Pennsylvania House Member Christopher Deluzio	Male	40	White	No	75
North Carolina House Member Jeff Jackson	Male	41	White	No	74
Colorado House Member Jason Crow	Male	45	White	No	70
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear	Male	46	White	No	69
Pennsylvania House Member Brendan Boyle	Male	47	White	No	68
North Carolina House Member Wiley Nickel	Male	48	White	No	67
Former Ohio Representative Tim Ryan	Male	51	White	No	64
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy	Male	51	White	No	64
Former Texas House Member Beto O’Rourke	Male	51	White	No	64
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro	Male	51	White	No	64

The average value of this sum is -6.0, with a standard deviation (SD) of 53.3; the median is -2: white 43-year-old Michigan House Member Hillary Scholten

Government experience.

I calculated the number of years a candidate was a Senator, governor, House, Mayor (last 10 years), Cabinet member and/or held another statewide office (last 10 years) – with at least one office having been held in the last 10 years. I capped total years of experience at 18, the equivalent of three Senate terms, while subtracting the number of years since a candidate held any of these offices.

I weight experience this way:

Senate = 5
Governor = 4
Other statewide office = 3
House = 2
Citywide office = 2
Cabinet = 1

This variable ranges from -5 for former Alabama Senator Doug Jones and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro to 90 for the 16 Senators in office for at least 18 years. The average of this weighted sum is 34.9 (SD=29.9); the median is 24, held by 11 candidates, including Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf.

Electoral strengths and weaknesses.

For this category, I considered seven questions:

Will s/he help Harris win a key state in the Electoral College?
Does s/he lack foreign policy or national security experience?
Will her/his ascension to the Vice Presidency cost Democrats a Senate seat?
Is s/he a Senator up for reelection in 2024?
Has s/he ever run for president?
How many times has s/he won a statewide election?
Has she ever run for political office?

Home state. On average, a vice-presidential nominee adds 2-3 percentage points to the party’s margin in her/his home state. For reliably Democratic or Republican states, though, these extra points mean nothing.

Given the dearth of state-level polling (71 from 16 states) assessing Harris and Trump, I used the sum of two values to set a Democratic win probability for each state and the District of Columbia (“DC”):

3.6, the time-weighted average of the Democratic nominee’s percentage-point (“point”) margin in the popular vote in the last three presidential elections, and
Each state’s three-election-weighted relative Democratic margin (“3W-RDM”)

I calculated this probability using a normal distribution with mean and SD of -1.055 and 5.774, respectively; these are based upon the difference between projected and actual margins in the last seven presidential elections. These values suggest a generic Democrat would beat a generic Republican 276-262 in the Electoral College in 2024, albeit with a large margin of error.

I thus assigned…

-11 to six candidates from the safe Democratic states (>98.5%) of Oregon and Washington, which are in the same region as California

-10 to 43 candidates from the other 11 safe Democratic states (>99.0%)[4]

-5 to 11 candidates from four solid Democratic states: Virginia (86.8%), Maine (88.9%), Colorado (92.3%), New Mexico (93.7%)

-2 to six candidates from the likely Democratic states of Minnesota (77.4%) and New Hampshire (74.2%)

0 to 10 candidates from the safe Republican states of Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, West Virginia (D<0.5%). Winning elections in these states suggests a strong appeal to moderate Republicans and other swing voters.

2 to 10 candidates from the “reach” states of Iowa, Ohio (10.4% each) and Texas (5.1%). The only Iowan in the spreadsheet is Secretary of Agriculture (and former Governor) Tom Vilsack. Ohio and Texas have key Senate races, meanwhile, and a running mate from the same state could boost Democratic turnout.[5]

5 to 28 candidates from the “insurance” states of Arizona (26.9%), Georgia (10.4%), Nevada (63.8%) and North Carolina (28.6%). While the most direct path to the 270 Electoral Votes (“EV”) needed to win the presidency does not include these states, Biden either won them in 2020 or lost by less than 1.5 points (NC).

10 to 13 candidates from Michigan (62.5%) and Wisconsin (51.0%). It is very difficult – though not impossible – for a Democrat to win the presidency without winning both.

11 to 15 candidates from Pennsylvania (51.7%), the state most likely to get a Democrat to 270 EV.

Foreign policy/national security. I deducted 2.5 points from the 34 candidates who never served in the Senate or House, in a Cabinet-level position related to foreign policy or national security, or had at least some military experience.

Loss of Senate seats. Democrats are trying to maintain a narrow Senate majority, which means that every Democratic Senate seat is vitally important.

I thus deducted 10 from Sherrod Brown (OH), Catherine Cortez Masto and Jackie Rosen (NV), Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Tim Kaine and Mark Warner (VA), Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock (GA), Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch (VT) and Jon Tester (MT) because a Republican governor would appoint a replacement.

I deducted 10 from 6 Senators seeking reelection in 2024, because they provide Democrats the best chance to keep those seats: Tammy Baldwin (WI), Brown, Bob Casey (PA), Angus King (ME), Rosen and Tester. I deducted 5 from nine other Senators seeking reelection because replacing them on the ballot could be tricky: Maria Cantwell (WA), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Martin Heinrich (NM), Kaine, Amy Klobuchar (MN), Chris Murphy (CT), Sanders, Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI). Finally, I deducted 2.5 for three swing-state Senators – John Fetterman (PA), Mark Kelly (AZ), Gary Peters (MI) – whose Democratic replacement (or a new nominee) could face a very tough special election to retain that seat in 2026.

Other considerations. Running for vice president – or president, for that matter – is an arduous task requiring a certain base level of electoral experience. One marker of this is how many times a candidate has won a statewide election. A total of 79 candidates, led by eight each for Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and Leahy, have won statewide at least once.

Another is running for Vice President, as Kaine did in 2016 (+5) or seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 or 2020.[6] Based on how far they advanced in the process, I added 5 to Sanders; 3 to Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Warren; and 1 to New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, former Montana Governor Steve Bullock, Julian Castro, former New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, O’Rourke and Ryan.

Ten Cabinet officials have never run for any political office, let alone the vice presidency, so they each lost 10.

TOTAL. This measure ranges from -22.5 for three Cabinet Secretaries – Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona (CT), Attorney General Merrick Garland (IL), Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (NY) – to 16 for four-term Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow. Stabenow is followed by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (11.5) and nine current and former House Members from Pennsylvania (11.0). The average of this sum is -1.9, (SD=9.0); the median is -2 (Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and Leahy).

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These three sums clearly measure distinct criteria, as their Pearson correlations show:

Demographic balance / Government experience -0.01
Government experience/ Electoral strengths and weaknesses -0.03
Demographic balance / Electoral strengths and weaknesses -0.21

It is thus not surprising that only five candidates – Casey, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, Peters and Ryan – have above average scores in all three categories. Peters comes closest to being at least 1 SD above the mean in all three categories, being +0.86 SD on Demographic Balance, +1.00 SD on Governmental Experience and +1.28 SD on Electoral Strengths and Weaknesses.

Indeed, when you convert each category sum to a z-score – number of SD above or below the mean – then sum the three values, Peters ranks second (3.14) behind Casey (3.47), with Stabenow (2.54), Shapiro (2.47) and Manchin (2.36) rounding out the top five. This initial sum is slightly more associated with Demographic Balance (r=0.61) than Government Experience (0.49) or Electoral Strengths and Weaknesses (0.49).

As I did four years ago, however, I adjusted these initial sums for various harder-to-quantify factors, including deducting 2.0 from Cooper for removing himself from running mate consideration and 1.0 from Whitmer because she clearly does not want the job.

Addictions and deductions included:

-0.25 for the 35 current House Members, as even a short-term seat loss could imperil a narrow House majority,
0.5 for the 17 candidates who would be the first Latino/a, Native American, Palestinian or LGBTQ+ person on a presidential ticket,
0.5 for the 15 candidates from North Carolina (9) or Texas (6), because this is playing offense in a winnable state, with Texans getting an additional 0.25 because of the state’s Senate election.
1.0 for the six candidates who have won statewide in a strongly Republican state,
1.0 for being popular with the party at large (Buttigieg, Whitmer) and 0.5 for being hailed by progressives and/or unions (Peters, Ryan, Sanders, MN Governor Tim Walz, Warren). I similarly added 0.5 to Inslee and Murphy for strong identification with fighting climate change and gun control, respectively, as well as 0.25 to Walz for being endorsed by March For Our Lives,
-1.0 for the four Independent Senators (King, Machin, Sanders and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona),
-1.0 for Senators Dick Durbin (IL), Murray and Chuck Schumer (NY), who would not want to relinquish Senate leadership positions. I similarly deducted 1.0 from Peters because he chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee,
-0.5 for broad unpopularity within the party (New York City Mayor Eric Adams, DeBlasio, NY Governor Kathy Hochul, Manchin, Sinema). I similarly deducted 1.0 from Casey and former Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards for previous anti-choice stances, and 0.5 from Shapiro for strongly supporting Israel,
-0.5 for past electoral weaknesses: Bullock losing the 2020 Senate election, Hochul’s narrow reelection win in 2022, Lightfoot losing reelection in 2023, and O’Rourke losing races for governor (2022) and Senate (2018),
0.25 to Crow for being born in Wisconsin, to Nevada House Member Dina Titus for being born in Georgia, and to North Carolina House Members Kathy Manning and Deborah Ross for being born in Michigan and Pennsylvania, respectively, and
-0.5 from Casey, Kelly and Stabenow for some campaign blandness.

Other additions are 1.0 to Kelly for being married to assassination-survivor Gabby Giffords, 1.0 to Garland for avenging Republicans torpedoing his Supreme Court nomination in 2016, 0.5 to Cooper for his strong working relationship with Harris, 0.5 to Shapiro for his deft handling of the assassination attempt against Trump, and 0.5 to Ryan for his strong showing in the 2022 Senate election against 2024 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee James D. Vance.

Other deductions are 10.0 from New Jersey Senator Robert Mendendez for resigning from the Senate after being convicted of bribery, 5.0 from former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for resigning in August 2021 because of a sexual harassment scandal, 1.0 from Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman for his 2022 stroke, 1.0 from former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam for a history of wearing blackface, and 1.0 from Ryan for his 2016 leadership run against California House Member Nancy Pelosi.

All told, 86 candidates had their initial scores adjusted by an average of -0.2. The resulting Final Score is thus strongly positively correlated (0.81) with the initial sum. It has a mean of -0.10 (SD=1.75) and a median of 0.07 (Booker and Julian Castro), two values reassuringly close to 0. Forty-six of the 143 potential 2020 Democratic vice-presidential candidates had Final Score≥1.00, with 12 topping 1.90, as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Top 2020 Democratic Vice-Presidential candidates by Final Score

Name	Strengths	Weaknesses	FINAL SCORE
Michigan Senator Gary Peters	White male; 2 statewide wins in MI; 12 years Senate; strong union backing	Running Democratic Senate Campaign Committee; 65	2.64
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear	46-year-old white male; 3 statewide wins in KY; 5 years governor	No foreign policy/national security experience	2.58
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro	51-year-old white male; 3 statewide wins in PA	Only 2 years as governor; no foreign policy/national security experience; possible base revolt over Gaza	2.50
Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey	White male; 3 statewide wins in PA; 18 years Senate	Need to keep Senate seat; lacks excitement; anti-choice history; 64	2.21
Arizona Senator Mark Kelly	White male; 2 statewide wins Arizona; 4 years Senate; astronaut, Navy; married to Gabby Giffords	60; lacks excitement	2.18
Pennsylvania House Member Brendan Boyle	47-year-old white male from Pennsylvania	No statewide wins; temporary loss House seat	2.07
Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow	White; Michigan; 24 years in Senate; retiring	74-year-old woman; bland	2.03
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg	42-year-old white male; popular in party; historic choice; served Afghanistan; ran for president	LGBTQ+; no statewide wins	1.98
Montana Senator Jon Tester	White male; 18 years in Senate; 3 statewide wins in MT	Loss of key Senate seat; candidate for reelection; 68	1.97
Former Pennsylvania House Member Conor Lamb	40-year-old white male; Marine/Navy; Pennsylvania	No statewide wins; only four years in House	1.96
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz	White male; progressive record; 2 statewide wins in MN; 6 years governor	60; solid Democratic state	1.92
Former Ohio House Member Tim Ryan	50-year-old white man; 20 years in House; Ohio; ran for president; union support	No statewide wins; ran against Pelosi in 2016	1.90

Table 2 includes five Senators, three governors, one House Member, two former House Members and a Cabinet Secretary. All 12 are white, while only Buttigieg and Stabenow are not heterosexual men. Half are younger than Harris, half are older. Seven are from the swing states of Pennsylvania (4), Michigan (2) and Arizona (1); four come from solid Republican states, including Indiana’s Buttigieg.

If we eliminate 74-year-old Stabenow, two Senators seeking reelection (Casey, Tester) and the relatively-inexperienced House Members (Boyle, Lamb), that leaves a strong group of seven contenders – of whom only Ryan has yet to receive any media attention:

7. Former Ohio House Member Tim Ryan

6. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz

5. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg

4. Arizona Senator Mark Kelly

3. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro

2. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear

1. Michigan Senator Gary Peters

Given the arbitrary nature of these “point” assignments, however, it is difficult to distinguish between these seven men, each of them has considerable strengths along with legitimate weaknesses. Still, of these seven, only Peters and Ryan were above average on all three dimensions. Meanwhile, Pritzker – purportedly on Harris’ list along with the first six men listed above – ranks #65 (0.33), as he comes from a safe Democratic state, is the same age as Harris and has no foreign policy/national security experience.

I suspect one of the first six men listed above will be Harris’ running mate, but neither will I predict which one, nor will I exclude the possibility of a surprise choice.

Until next time…and if you like what you read here, please consider making a donation. Thank you!

[1] I excluded the two Senators from California – Laphonza Butler and Alex Padilla – and Michael Bennet and Maizie Hirono of Colorado and Hawaii, respectively. Bennet was born in India, Hirono was born in Japan. I also included former Senators Doug Jones of Alabama and Pat Leahy of Vermont.

[2] 78-year-old black woman

[3] 37-year-old white man

[4] Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont

[5] Florida (30.4%) is also in this category, but there are no candidates from the Sunshine State.

[6] I did not consider former presidential or vice-presidential nominees Clinton, John Edwards, Al Gore or John Kerry, nor did I consider former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley who sought the nomination in 2016.