Presidential Versus Vice Presidential Home State Advantage: A Comparative Analysis of Electoral Significance, Causes, and Processes, 1884‐2008

Abstract

This article compares the electoral significance, causes, and processes associated with presidential versus vice presidential home state advantages. Our analysis of presidential election returns from 1884 through 2008 demonstrates that presidential candidates generally receive a large, statistically significant home state advantage. However, vice presidential home state advantages are statistically negligible and conditioned on the interactive effect of political experience and state population. Furthermore, the results indicate that the mobilization of new voters primarily accounts for presidential home state advantage, while vice presidential home state advantage is mainly due to the conversion of existing voters. Although home state advantages do occur in presidential elections, according to our analysis, a presidential or vice presidential home state advantage has not changed the outcome of any presidential election since 1884.

Measuring the Vice-Presidential Home State Advantage With Synthetic Controls

“…If all heterogeneity between treated states and the U.S. aggregate were time-invariant, the two trends would be parallel; instead, the trend in treated states is downward relative to the U.S. control group. (Devine & Kopko, 2013). Substantively, a 2.67 percentage point increase in a ticket's share of the two-party vote-ceteris paribus-would be enough to swing nearly 20% of state-years in our data from one party to another.…”

Bringing Voters into the Equation: An Individual‐Level Analysis of the Vice Presidential Home State Advantage

“…Heersink and Peterson () find systematic evidence of a statistically significant VP HSA, using the synthetic control method. Moreover, they reject contradictory results from previous studies—particularly, Devine and Kopko (; )—as attributable to biased estimates derived from the Lewis‐Beck and Rice () equation. Devine and Kopko (), on the other hand, find no systematic evidence of a statistically significant VP HSA when using a multimethod approach that includes the Lewis‐Beck and Rice equation as well as fixed effects regression models of state election results and logistic regression models of survey data from the 1952–2008 American National Election Studies (ANES).…”

“…Most analyses of the vice presidential, as well as presidential, home state advantage have derived their estimates from some version of the L‐BRE (Devine and Kopko ; ; Disarro, Barber, and Rice ; Dudley and Rapoport ; also see Schultz ). The most prominent recent examples come from Devine and Kopko's research.…”

“…But do vice presidential candidates deliver a home state advantage (HSA)? Until recently, there had been a relative consensus in the political science literature that the answer was “No”—or, at least, “Not usually.” That is to say, empirical studies prior to 2016 consistently showed that the vice presidential home state advantage (VP HSA), on average, was not statistically distinguishable from zero (Devine and Kopko ; ; Dudley and Rapoport ; Garand ; Holbrook ; Rosenstone ; Schultz ). However, some studies claimed a conditional effect.…”

“…However, some studies claimed a conditional effect. Devine and Kopko (; ), for instance, described the VP HSA as dependent upon two factors: home state population and political experience. Specifically, running mates who come from relatively less‐populous home states and have extensive experience as an elected official within that state are likely to deliver an HSA.…”