Vice Presidents Who Have Run in Presidential General Elections — And How They Fared
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With Joe Biden stepping aside and Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, Harris is now the latest vice president (VP) to run for the chief executive office. It’s been somewhat common in US history for vice presidents to campaign for the presidency at some point, but the level of success has been mixed.
So, how does Harris’ campaign stack up to history?
To get to the answer, I followed this process:
- I first took the list of vice presidents from the US Senate website. (Vice presidents preside over the US Senate as the tie-breaking vote.)
- Then I filtered out any vice presidents that did not make it to the presidential general election (so, those who didn’t make it past the primary, if they ran at all, are not included). These VPs are in the first table below.
- I made a second table of just the VPs who ran for president while they were vice president. Kamala Harris is in a similar situation, so those instances are the most comparable.
- There is also a third table below of vice presidents from the second table who served under presidents who had presidential approval ratings (more on that later).
There are also some caveats to note.
- Before the advent of primary elections, some VPs threw their hat in the ring for president, but for one reason or another did not become their party’s general election nominee. These VPs are NOT included below.
- John Tyler and Chester Arthur are presidents who never made it to a presidential general election. Tyler became president following Zachary Taylor’s death from a still disputed cause, and Arthur became president following the assassination of James Garfield. (Arthur ran in 1884 but did not get renominated, so he would not have made this list anyway.)
Vice Presidents In Presidential General Elections
The vice presidents in the following table are those who made it to a presidential general election.
There are 20 vice presidents who, at some point, made it to the general election for president. The only two people who ran in general elections for president before becoming vice president are Aaron Burr and Thomas Hendricks. (At the time of Burr’s campaigns, the second-place vote-getter in the election became vice president. That was changed with the ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804, which made the elections resemble the presidential/vice presidential tickets we see today.)
You probably noticed the “No, but…” notations I have in the column labeled Ran for it While VP, “it” being the presidential term immediately following their vice presidency. That is because these five (5) VPs filled a vacancy for president during a term. So, they technically didn’t run for that successive presidential election while being the VP, but it’s a much different situation than those who simply have “No,” in that column, as that group didn’t run for that next election at all.
- Two of these VPs replaced the president following the latter’s assassination: Theodore Roosevelt (filling in for William McKinley) and Lyndon B. Johnson (John F. Kennedy).
- Two of these VPs replaced the president following the latter’s death from ill health: Calvin Coolidge (filling in for Warren Harding) and Harry Truman (Franklin D. Roosevelt).
- One of these VPs replaced the president following the latter’s resignation: Gerald Ford (filling in for Richard Nixon).
Here are some other interesting data points on these VPs from the table above.
- Seven (7) of them ran for multiple presidential campaigns, with four (4) of them running three times: Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, Martin Van Buren, and Richard Nixon.
- Ten (10) of them won at least one presidential election, while two (2) of them won twice: Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon.
- Eleven (11) of them were vice president in the 20th century, while only five (5) of them were vice president in the 19th century.
Those Who Ran for President While They Were Vice President
But the most relevant stat to the topic of how Kamala Harris compares is this: Only eight (8) of these VPs ran for president while they were vice president. These are more comparable to Harris because of the similar electoral circumstance, as opposed to those VPs that waited at least one term after they finished before they ran for president themselves.
That may come as somewhat of a surprise — the vice presidency is considered one of if not the primary stepping stone to the presidency, so one might think more VPs would want to capitalize on being on the voters’ minds. Name recognition is an important aspect to political campaigns, and name recognition is going to generally be higher when your name is more relevant (i.e., while you are serving as VP instead of later on).
However, one reason a VP may not run for president right away is that they feel that electoral circumstances are not in their favor. For example, if the president is not popular, the VP may be “guilty by association” in voters’ eyes and therefore be unpopular themselves. The momentum may be on the side of the opposition party in that case, so a VP may want to wait until the timing is better for them to run for their own party’s nomination.
What Statistics are — and aren’t — on Kamala Harris’ Side in 2024?
Both the Trump and Harris campaigns and their allies are going to take whatever numbers they can to say that they have the momentum and the stronger campaign. Here’s some examples of statistics and whether they favor Harris’ chances of being the next sitting VP to be elected president immediately following their vice presidency.
Historical Precedent
What may also come as a surprise is the lack of recent success had by these VPs who run for president immediately afterward. Since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson ran under vastly different rules (pre-12th Amendment), how well they compare to Harris’ situation is somewhat dubious. So, if we exclude them, only two of six VPs that ran for the presidential term immediately after their vice presidency have won that election:
- Martin Van Buren in 1836
- George H.W. Bush in 1988
Presidential Approval Ratings
Another factor we can look at is presidential approval ratings. These should be taken with a grain of salt — elections are decided by the Electoral College, which doesn’t always neatly follow the divide of the popular vote (e.g., the victor may win 51% of the popular vote but 65% of the electoral vote). Still, it can give us a sense of the national opinion on how the current president may affect the chances of the current VP.
However, the presidential approval rating has only been around since the end of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. So, this statistic is only relevant to Richard Nixon (in his 1960 campaign), Hubert Humphrey, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore, and Kamala Harris.
Here we’ll use Gallup’s final presidential approval rating results prior to the election that VP was running in. This isn’t a perfect estimation, as the length of time before an election differs, polling has been refined over time (but faces challenges), and voting changes such as early and absentee voting have been introduced. That said, it will suffice for this exercise.
How well the presidential approval rating reflects the popular vote for the vice president running for president in the next election is somewhat mixed. So far, however, the popular vote has not been much higher than what that last presidential approval rating was — if it was higher at all.
This suggests that Harris has some work to do. While obviously the Electoral College is the more important vote to get, that is still based partly on how the popular vote is distributed across the states. If the popular vote for Harris in 2024 is reflective of Biden’s approval rating, it’s unlikely that Harris can make up enough ground in the Electoral College.
Current Polls for Trump vs. Harris
When looking at polls, one must be careful about taking the numbers at face value. On the surface, Trump or Harris could look like they are doing well in the overall poll, but if they are not doing well with demographics that are predisposed to voting for them, that spells trouble for them. For example, it would be alarming for Trump if white Evangelicals support is lower than expected, as would be the case for Harris if Black support was lower than expected.
That said, if we look at the baseline results of the polls, the latest numbers from RealClearPolitics suggest that Trump has a slight edge in several battleground states while Harris has the edge in others. The averages of the latest polls are as of September 17, 2024.
- Trump edge: Arizona (+1.3 percentage points), Georgia (+0.2), North Carolina (+0.4), Pennsylvania (+0.2)
- Harris edge: Michigan (+0.7 percentage points), Nevada (+1.2), Wisconsin (+1.2 points)
Election Forecasts
Six of the major election predictors have mixed forecasts about who is going to win. As of September 17, 2024, CNalysis, Inside Elections, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and Cook Political Report give Harris the slight edge, while Split Ticket and Elections Daily give the edge to Trump.
For the most part, they agree on Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as being too much of toss-ups to call one way or another. However, there are some exceptions:
- CNalysis sees Michigan as tilting toward Harris.
- Split Ticket sees Georgia and North Carolina as leaning toward Trump.
- Elections Daily sees North Carolina as leaning Republican.
Recent history has generally not been kind to sitting vice presidents who run for president in the succeeding term. Since Martin Van Buren in 1836, only George H.W. Bush did it back in 1988. Will Harris be able to buck that history? It’s hard to predict one way or the other, though the statistics above indicate that Harris still has a lot of work to do to improve her chances.
But what you can expect (at least right now) is that the 2024 presidential contest will be a very competitive election.
