Vice-precedented

Since becoming vice-president, Kamala Harris hasn't been very popular with the public--but how much of that is the result of her own qualities, and how much is because she has served with a president who hasn't been very popular?  I looked for data on approval ratings of previous vice-presidents.  For this analysis, I just used a single observation for each one--if Joe Biden decides to step aside, I may include more.  I tried to use approval ratings at about this point in the term (fourth year of the first term), but questions on vice-presidential approval haven't been asked all that often, so I couldn't follow that closely.   The figure shows net approval ratings (approve minus disapprove) for the vice-president and president.*

There is an association--if the president has a good approval rating, the vice-president is likely to have one too.  A regression of vice-presidential approval on presidential approval gives:

VP=9.8+0.64P; t-ratios are 2.6 and 3.2.  Three vice-presidents are substantially below the predicted values--Harris, Dick Cheney, and Spiro Agnew.  That company is not good news for Harris.  The biggest surprise is Dan Quayle, who was above the predicted value, with 50% approve and only 33% disapprove, when the survey was taken (January 1992).  

Presidents have opportunities to stand for the whole nation--doing things like making 4th of July speeches--and vice-presidents are often given less appealing tasks.  So I expected a negative intercept--if people were evenly divided on the president, they'd be predominantly negative on the vice-president.  Of course, you can't be too confident about any conclusions from such a small sample, but the evidence points in the other direction.  

 

*There was no approval/disapproval question for Mondale, so I used a favorable/unfavorable one.  I thought it was important to include something for that case because of the parallels with the current situation (unpopular president running for re-election).  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]