The Vice Presidency in the Twenty-First Century

The vice presidency has undergone almost revolutionary change since its inception 227 years ago. Conceived as a convenient solution to a problem created by the Electoral College, the Vice President has only two constitutional functions—to serve as a successor to the President and as the President of the Senate. However, over the past sixty years, vice presidents have become increasingly part of and integral to American governance, and the last three (Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden) have been exceptionally active executive actors. What was once an all-but forgotten office is now an essential part of a president’s administration. These developments are, generally speaking, welcomed by political observers and analysts. However, they also raise important practical, legal, and normative questions moving forward. This Article begins by reviewing the emergence of the modern vice presidency and follows with an analysis of the current role of the office. Next, it examines the attributes, successes, and failures of modern vice presidents, focusing primarily on the tenures of Gore, Cheney, and Biden. Finally, it turns to some of the challenges vice presidents will face going forward, as well as the legal and normative questions that surround this new model of the vice presidency

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

This article critiques two leading analyses of the vice presidential home state advantage (VP HSA) and uses their fundamental methodological insights to develop a comprehensive, individual-level analysis aimed at resolving a major conflict in the political science literature. Our analyses of the 1952–2016 American National Election Studies and the 2008–16 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies provide no evidence of a statistically significant VP HSA. These results are consistent with Devine and Kopko\u27s findings, and inconsistent with Heersink and Peterson\u27s, regarding the VP HSA, in general. However, they are also inconsistent with Devine and Kopko\u27s previous findings regarding a conditional advantage based upon home state population and candidate experience. These results underscore the importance of using individual- rather than aggregate-level data to analyze voting behavior, whenever possible