Degree of Certainty: Why Hillary Wins

Donald Trump has picked Mike Pence as his running mate. While I most likely disagree with Pence on most things, he might be a relatively capable Oval Office sitter if Trump wins but resigns in a year to become a judge on America's Got Talent. 

But that won't happen. Whatever Pence's qualifications may be, the ticket as a whole has a glaring omission: nobody with a Harvard or Yale degree.

That means it will lose. It might have lost anyway; Hillary Clinton Yale law degree, uh, trumps Trump's Penn bachelor's degree. But perhaps getting a Harvard or Yale running mate could have evened things up.

Here are the universities that the Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees since 1980 attended. If two schools are listed, the first is the undergraduate school. The Democrat is on the left, the Republican on the right. The winning ticket is in italic. Data from before 2004 and earlier is copied from this 2008 blog post.

2016 (likely): Wellesley, Yale (law) v. Pennsylvania
vp:     ???  v. Hanover, Indiana U. (law)
2012: Columbia, Harvard (Law) v. Brigham Young, Harvard (Law, MBA)
vp: Delaware, Syracuse (Law) v. Miami (OH)
2008: Columbia, Harvard (Law) v. Naval Academy
vp: Delaware, Syracuse (Law) v. Idaho
2004: Yale, Boston College(law) v. Yale, Harvard(MBA)
vp: NC St., North Carolina v. Wyoming
2000: Harvard v. Yale, Harvard(MBA)
vp: Yale v. Wyoming
1996: Georgetown, Yale (law) v. Kansas
vp: Harvard vs. Occidental
1992: Georgetown, Yale (law) v. Yale
vp: Harvard vs. DePauw, Indiana (law)
1988: Swarthmore, Harvard (law) v. Yale
vp: Texas v DePauw, Indiana U (law)
1984: Minnesota v. Eureka
vp: Marymount Manhattan, Fordham (law) vs. Yale
1980: Naval Academy v. Eureka
VP: Minnesota v. Yale