Do Running Mates Matter? begins with a simple but familiar tension: the vice presidency is routinely discounted as an irrelevant office, and yet running mate selection is often at the center of speculation and analysis during a presidential campaign. Vice presidents and the candidates for this office remain both dazzlingly close to presidential power and incredibly distant from it. Christopher Devine and Kyle Kopko have written a rigorous, compelling analysis of the impact of running mate selection on voter decision making. Their choice to ground their analysis in this specific tension surrounding the vice presidency is key not only to their scholarly contribution but also to the way that their book speaks to an audience beyond political science. Framing the book in terms of both the limits of their academic knowledge and the contradictions in public perceptions broadens the scope of the analysis and invites the wider world into the conversation.

In the empirical chapters, Devine and Kopko offer a thorough accounting of how presidential candidates and voters alike expect the running mate decision to matter. They test three types of running mate effects: direct effects, targeted effects (on specific groups of voters), and indirect effects. Their analysis is systematic and rich, drawing on multiple sources of survey research and employing panel data when possible to assess the impact of running mate selection on vote intention and perception of presidential candidates. The authors find evidence for limited direct effects. In other words, perceptions of vice presidential candidates do have some independent influence on vote choice—but the effects are quite small compared to perceptions of presidential candidates and are short-lived, in most cases evaporating before ballots are cast. More surprising are the authors’ findings about the near absence of targeted effects. They find scant evidence that region, religion, gender, and ideological identity affect vote intentions. Offering the caveat that there are some limitations to their data and approach, their analysis cautions against the tendency to view running mate selection as an opportunity for group outreach.

The answer to the book’s title question inches toward the affirmative in the final empirical chapter, which assesses the indirect effects of vice presidential candidates. Here, we see evidence from several recent elections that illustrates how approval of running mates can alter voters’ evaluations of presidential candidates, including approval, as well as more detailed appraisal of candidate traits like honesty. The authors offer a helpful answer to their framing puzzle: How can veep selection feel so insignificant and so consequential at the same time? The answer lies, at least in part, in the indirect effects: running mate selection shapes voters’ impressions of presidential qualities.

The authors conclude with some ideas about why their findings matter and a list of recommendations for how scholars, journalists, and other observers should think about running mate selection. These practical recommendations summarize the findings and help recontextualize them in recent and contemporary politics.

The rigor and clear thinking that Devine and Kopko bring to this book help situate it alongside the best empirical work on the vice presidency (Jody Baumgartner, The American Vice Presidency Reconsidered, 2006; Lee Sigelman and Paul J. Wahlbeck, “The ‘Veepstakes’: Strategic Choice in Presidential Running Mate Selection,” 91 [4], American Political Science Review, 1997) and bring it into conversation with the study of presidential elections and voter behavior more generally. This task of integrating running mate selection into the larger study of American politics is a crucial one, and one that has sometimes been neglected by even the best of these previous analyses. Do Running Mates Matter? represents a major step toward this objective.

A significant part of bringing the “veepstakes” literature into the mainstream is setting an intellectual agenda. This book generates several important questions for further study. First, how do indirect effects and other implications of vice presidential selection work differently for different presidential candidates? One of the recommendations in the conclusion is that presidential candidates should select a running mate who can serve well in the office. Among the examples cited of effective vice presidents are Dick Cheney and Joe Biden, both of whom did considerable work on national security and foreign policy. These examples suggest a particular dynamic of vice presidential selection, however: both were chosen by presidential candidates who had considerably less national and foreign policy experience. Is there a different set of recommendations for presidential candidates who come in with more experience and an established (and establishment) recommendation and who feel pressure, however misguided, to select a running mate who can offset the insider reputation? Devine and Kopko’s findings suggest that these concerns might be overblown. But put another way, are there compelling reasons for candidates like Biden in 2020 or McCain in 2008 to seek out running mates who bring different experiences and sensibilities, and do those reasons have implications for the role of the vice president?

Second, how does this book apply to Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris in 2020? Obviously, more survey evidence from 2020, of the sort they employ for earlier years, would be necessary to answer the question definitively. However, the reception of the Harris selection would seem to reflect the book’s findings. Biden’s choice appears to have been well received among Democrats and to have brought little additional negative media attention. Harris is well known after her 2020 presidential bid, and her service in the Senate and as attorney general in the nation’s largest state afford conventional credentials for higher office. Furthermore, the selection of a woman of Indian and Black racial backgrounds seems to have signaled to voters that Biden is attentive to the concerns of these constituencies and the expectation that the Democratic Party should continue to be the party of “historic firsts” for traditionally excluded groups. These are not targeted effects, but rather are broader concerns held by large segments of the Democratic electorate. Viewed in light of these findings, it makes sense that Biden would have selected Harris and not a more targeted pick from an electorally competitive state or region or from a demographic that Democrats have struggled to reach (working-class white men, for example). Relatedly, Devine and Kopko’s analysis opens up new questions about how we should think about different groups that could be “targeted.” They acknowledge that their analysis is limited by the kinds of running mates who have been selected and that this group is not an especially diverse lot. Harris offers a new data point to assess targeted effects as well, and scholars have much work to do to think about how these categories, including race, ideology, and gender, are framed in the context of the running mate selection.

Finally, if I were to offer a criticism of this book, it is that the authors could have taken more seriously the evolving context, particularly around partisan polarization, over the period they cover. How were different gender dynamics in play, for example, in 1984, 2008, and 2020? How have hyperpartisanship and changing intraparty struggles altered the stakes of running mate selection? The authors invoke context to note the possibilities and limitations of their findings, but the backdrop of intensifying polarization, in particular, does not factor into their argument very much. However, the insights in this book put future scholars in a better position to tackle these and many other questions about vice presidential candidates. This is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in American politics.