13

Give that VP rating in the public eye seems to track pretty closely that of president, e.g.

enter image description here

Are there cases when the VP was consistently rated higher than the president for a substantial amounts of time?

Improve this question
3

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
20

Yes, Al Gore exceeded Bill Clinton's net favorability for long periods throughout their two terms in office. This does, however, depend on which organisation conducts the poll, and is complicated by the fact that vice presidential approval rating is polled far less frequently than presidential approval.

According to Gallup's approval rating data, taken from here and here, Gore out-polled Clinton for their entire first term in office, although this dropped off throughout their second term, and majorly towards the end of their term and Gore's presidential bid.

enter image description here

However, interestingly, Jeffery E. Cohen's 2001 article in Presidential Studies Quarterly looked at polling data from the Roper Poll Archive at the University of Connecticut, and found that Gore's approval rating exceeded Clinton's throughout their second term as well. This was looking at just approval rating rather than net approval rating (positive - negative) though, which could explain the difference.

enter image description here

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    I suspect the "net rating" bit is critical: vice-presidents tend to have far more "don't care" ratings than presidents do.
    – Mark
    Nov 10, 2021 at 0:28
  • 3
    @Mark: That makes sense, except that isn't that the opposite of what we see in this answer? The graphs in this answer indicate that Gore's approval rating remained several points higher than Clinton's, but his net approval rating dropped below Clinton's. If we trust these graphs, then that implies that his disapproval rating was also several points higher, and so his "don't care" ratings must have been much lower. No?
    – ruakh
    Nov 10, 2021 at 1:22

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .