The difference between how Republicans and Democrats pick their veeps

(Image credit: Paul J. Richards/Getty Images)

published 31 May 2016

The Democratic Party likes to see senators tapped for vice president. In fact, if this year's VP candidate hails from the Senate, Democrats will have chosen senators in 16 out of 17 elections going back to 1948. (The one exception was 1972, when George McGovern named former Ambassador Sargent Shriver to replace his first choice, who was — you guessed it — a senator.)

Republicans have no such affinity for the Senate. Six of their veep picks since 1964 were former members of the House of Representatives, and three were governors (Spiro Agnew twice and Sarah Palin once). The GOP also went with a senator in three elections (Dan Quayle in 1988 and 1992 and Bob Dole in 1976).

This year, with Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee, an unpredictable campaign season combines with an inconsistent Republican record to leave the GOP's veepstakes wide open. Trump's campaign has indicated that its VP list is quite short at this point, and one Trump adviser said it may include women — after previously commenting that selecting anyone other than a white man would be "pandering."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.