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One year ago this month, we started up a shop offering bumper stickers, buttons and magnets that support various Democratic running mate combinations for the presidential race in 2008. Obama-Edwards 2008? Sure. Gore-Kucinich 2008? Gravel-Clinton? Well, OK. Kucinich-Richardson 2008? I don’t understand that pairing myself, but we’ve got it too, just in case. In fact, our goal has been to offer just about every possible combination of presidential and vice presidential candidate from among the apparent contenders. That way, YOU can tell US what a reasonable 2008 ticket would look like.

In November 2006, when I started reporting trends in our sales for various Democratic tickets, every single one of the running mate combinations we had sold included Barack Obama as either president or vice president. That changed in the Spring of 2007, as people began searching for alternative tickets and the brightness of Obama’s star power began to diminish to mere mortal levels.

It’s been three months, so let’s do an update on Democratic Party running mate choices to look at patterns that appeared over the summer. The following are running mate combinations (placed in President-Vice President order) that have garnered at least a 1% share of all sales from June 8, 2007 through September 10, 2007, making them the major contenders in the hearts of our customers for a 2008 Democratic presidential ticket:

Gore-Obama: 46.7%
Clinton-Obama: 16.0%
Edwards-Obama: 6.0%
Kucinich-Gravel: 5.7%
Biden-Obama: 4.0%
Gore-Edwards: 3.4%
Obama-Clinton: 1.4%
Obama-Richardson: 1.3%
Clinton-Pelosi: 1.2%
Gore-Richardson: 1.1%
Gore-Kucinich: 1.1%
Gravel-Obama: 1.1%
Obama-Edwards: 1.0%

We can further tweak out the distribution of presidential and vice presidential choices. The following is the percent distribution of sold items supporting the following people as presidential partners in a ticket:

Al Gore: 52.7%
Hillary Clinton: 18.3%
Dennis Kucinich: 8.0%
John Edwards: 6.9%
Joseph Biden: 4.3%
Barack Obama: 4.3%
Mike Gravel: 2.3%
Bill Richardson: 1.4%
Chris Dodd: less than 1%.

The following is the percent distribution of sold items supporting the following people as vice presidential partners in a ticket:

Barack Obama: 76.8%
Mike Gravel: 5.7%
John Edwards: 4.9%
Bill Richardson: 2.6%
Dennis Kucinich: 2.0%
Al Gore: 1.7%
Hillary Clinton: 1.6%
Nancy Pelosi: 1.4%
Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd: less than 1%.

Those are two very different sets of preferences, aren’t they? You might see something else (if so, share your insight) but it seems to me that when people think about running-mate teams, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich are thought of primarily as presidential candidates, but not very often as the vice presidential member of the team. Barack Obama is very often thought of as a vice presidential candidate, but very rarely thought of as the presidential member of the ticket. Would Senator Obama be happy with that news? I don’t know; I suppose it depends on what in his heart he’s been running for.

When another season’s passed, I’ll update this information. But tell me now — what’s your dream ticket for the 2008 elections? Make the case.