I have been playing around with 2020 Dem VP picks and I ended up making graphs...

So here it goes. I took 24 name of eligible women who have been touted as possible nominees for vice-president in 2020, and compared them on different metrics. /1

First, I computed an 'experience index', which assigns a 'value' to the highest office occupied, and then adds a seniority bonus that takes into account length of service in various offices weighted by the 'value' of those offices. Here is the index plotted against age. /2

I also colour-coded by (subjective) indicators of ideology and name recognition - if you're into that. /3

Then I used 538 estimates for each state being the 'tipping point' state in 2016 - i.e. the one most likely to provide the pivotal vote in the Electoral College. It's an indicator of how valuable the VP pick is, assuming some home state advantage. /4

An alternative indicator is the State Power Index, which weights the Tipping Point Chance by population - measuring the likelihood an *individual* voter casts the pivotal vote in each state. There is also some evidence the VP home state effect is stronger in smaller states! /5

Taking all into account, I derived my own, totally unscientific 'VP value' index - which is the sum of normalized tipping point scores and normalized experience scores, all weighted by name recognition. And the top 10 are... /6

1. Amy Klobuchar
2. Tammy Baldwin
3. Gretchen Whitmer
4. Janet Napolitano
5. Val Demings
6. Elizabeth Warren
7. Catherine Cortez-Masto
8. Kamala Harris
9. Kathleen Sebelius
10. Kirsten Gillibrand

**Obviously this doesn't consider many other political and demographic factors** /7