We Vote for President, Not Vice President

There is no conclusive evidence from the CHQ Poll that the vice presidential slot—even if it’s given to our favorite candidate—makes that much difference in how we vote.

We asked you:  “Newt Gingrich (35.0%) and Mitt Romney (22.3%) are the two frontrunners in the GOP presidential race, according to RealClearPolitics.com. If either Gingrich or Romney were to win the nomination, would you support their candidacy if your candidate of choice were to get the VP nomination?

Here is how you responded:

40%  Yes, I would support either Gingrich, or Romney.

36%  No, not even if my candidate of choice were to get the VP nomination.

13%  None of the above.

11%  I'm still undecided at this point.

Given that Gingrich and Romney are listed as the two frontrunners, it can be assumed that a good portion of the respondents who voted “yes” are voting that way because they have the presidential choice they wanted, not because of a vice presidential choice.  As a result, there probably are more truly “no” votes than “yes” votes.  In other words, most respondents are not going to vote for the GOP presidential candidate (Gingrich or Romney) just because their favorite candidate was offered the veepship.

That brings up another interesting point.  How many of the “no” votes are Ron Paul supporters?  We know from repeated poll results that Paul has a sizeable following on ConservativeHQ.com.  It can be speculated with some certainty that a large number of Paul supporters will not vote for any other GOP candidate.  Thus a Paul supporter is likely to say “Ron Paul would not accept the vice presidential nomination from someone who disagrees with him on critical issues,” as well as “None of the other candidates would ever consider offering the vice presidential slot to Ron Paul.”  Either way, a Ron Paul supporter would not consider it likely to happen, and thus be more likely to vote “no.”