This article was written by Dr Michael Hopkins, Reader in American Foreign Policy in our Department of History.
On 6 January 1989 Vice President George H. W. Bush presided over a joint session of Congress to count the vote in the Electoral College and declare the winner of the presidential election of November 1988. He concluded his restrained remarks with a wry smile as the figures confirmed him as the 43rd president of the United States.
It is possible that 6 January 2025 will see another vice president overseeing the certification of her victory in the 2024 presidential election. But what does the historical record reveal about the prospects for the election of a vice president as president?
Kamala Harris is the fiftieth person to hold the office of vice president. Fifteen of the previous 49 occupants went on to become President. But eight of them assumed office only after the death of the president. Four of these were the result of death by natural causes. In 1841 John Tyler succeeded William Harrison, who died after only one month as president; Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency from Zachary Taylor in 1850; Calvin Coolidge became president after Warren Harding’s death in 1923; and Harry Truman succeeded Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. Four followed an assassination: Andrew Johnson replaced Abraham Lincoln in 1865; Chester Arthur succeeded James Garfield in 1881; Theodore Roosevelt replaced William McKinley in 1901; and Lyndon Johnson succeeded John Kennedy in 1963. One transfer of power came after a presidential resignation, when Gerald Ford took over from Richard Nixon in 1974.
Kamala Harris is the eleventh serving vice president to stand for election. Six of the previous ten sitting vice presidents were defeated: George Clinton in 1808; John C. Breckinridge in 1860; Richard Nixon in 1960; Hubert Humphrey in 1968; Walter Mondale in 1980; and Al Gore in 2000. Three former vice presidents later stood for president: Henry A. Wallace (Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president, 1941-1945) ran in 1948 and lost; Richard Nixon sought election again in 1968 and won; and Joe Biden (Barack Obama’s vice president, 2009-2017) was victorious in 2020. Only four serving vice presidents won election: John Adams in 1796; Thomas Jefferson in 1800; Martin Van Buren in 1836; and George H. W. Bush in 1988.
The historical odds seem slightly against Kamala Harris – only six of the 15 vice presidents who became president did so by winning an election and only four of the previous ten campaigns by serving vice presidents have been successful. Then there is the cautionary outcome of the only other example of the president withdrawing and the vice president becoming the candidate: Lyndon Johnson stepped down and Vice President Hubert Humphrey was defeated in 1968. Kamala Harris faces in Donald Trump only the second former president to lose a presidential election and stand again for election as a major party candidate (Van Buren in 1848 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 were defeated as third party candidates). In 1888 Grover Cleveland failed in his bid for re-election but stood again in 1892 and won.
Whatever the outcome, this year’s presidential election is taking place in very different circumstances from the last time a serving vice president announced his own victory. The campaign in 1988 might have witnessed some sharp exchanges between the candidates but the verification of the result was orderly. The United States in 2024 is a deeply polarised country. The January 2025 confirmation of the result has the shadow of January 2021 hanging over it, when rioters entered the US Congress to prevent Vice President Mike Pence certifying the count and declaring the winner.
The best hope is that the result will not be contested; and, if it is, it will be resolved in a peaceful fashion. Vice President Al Gore’s team took their case in 2000 to the Supreme Court but, when it ruled against him, he conceded gracefully to George W. Bush. Let us hope that 6 January 2025 will be remembered only for a recurrence of the constitutional quirk of the vice president tabulating the Electoral College results and declaring victory for the vice president; or for the losing candidate stoically accepting defeat as she declares Donald Trump as the next president. But a darker scenario looms. If he loses, will Donald Trump again challenge the result? In 1860 the serving vice president and defeated Democratic Party candidate, John C. Breckinridge, had to concede victory to the Republican Party candidate, Abraham Lincoln. No one wants to see anything similar to the sequence of events that followed that election and led to the American Civil War. One hopes, rather, that “the better angels of our nature” will triumph over the forces of disorder.