US election: does it matter who is the vice-presidential pick? In Tim Walz’s case, yes

By David Hastings Dunn, Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham

The fanfare and publicity surrounding Tim Walz for his first fortnight as Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick has sparked renewed interest as to whether the second person on the ticket makes any difference when it comes to the result of the election. The conventional wisdom on the role and significance of the US vice-presidential office – in the words of Franklin D Roosevelt’s VP, John Nance Garner – is that it’s “not…

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