Do Running Mates Matter? : University Press of Kansas : 9780700629695 : 0700629696 : 30 May 2020 : The American vice presidency, as the saying goes, "is not worth a bucket of warm spit." Yet vice presidential candidates, many people believe, can make all the difference in winning?or losing?a presidential election. Is that true, though? Did Sarah Palin, for example, sink John McCain's campaign in 2008? Did Joe Biden help Barack Obama win? Do running mates actually matter? In the first book to put this question to a rigorous test, Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko draw upon an unprecedented range of empirical data to reveal how, and how much, running mates influence voting in presidential elections. Building on their previous work in The VP Advantage and evidence from over 200 statistical models spanning the 1952 to 2016 presidential elections, the authors analyze three pathways by which running mates might influence vote choice. First, of course, they test for direct effects, or