The latest ABC News/WaPo Poll has an interesting section on public opinion on the respective parties’ Vice-Presidential nominees.
First, the Democrats:
And, the Republicans:
So, basically, what we have are entirely meaningless results for two reasons.
First, it’s fairly obvious that most of the responses are based on name recognition. People know who Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee are. They don’t know who Kathleen Sebelius, Ted Strickland, Mark Sanford, and Tim Pawlenty are. It makes sense that the names with higher name recognition would poll higher at this stage.
Second, who the public likes for the Veep nominee isn’t, in the end, all that important. The candidates will choose who they will choose and the public will, for the most part, accept it assuming it’s a smart choice.
I’ve long thought that the true importance of the Vice-Presidential choice isn’t who the candidate chooses so much as whether or not that choice reflects good decision making.
