With all of the talk of potentially replacing Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, there really hasn't been a good quantitative analysis of the pros and cons of each potential replacement. Many of the names floated have been popular Democratic governors, including Gavin Newsom (California), Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan), Josh Shapiro (Penn.), and Andy Beshear (Kentucky).

Due to the challenges with polling potential replacements, one might instead look at other quantifiable metrics to get a sense of how they are likely to perform on a national stage. I decided to evaluate each blue state governor across four key metrics: candidate age, prior elected experience, home state importance, and vote margin vs Biden; receiving a score of 0 to 100pts for each metric.

Age — Since Biden's age is the most contentious issue with his current campaign, picking a replacement with a suitable age should be a critical factor. The minimum age to qualify for a presidential run is 35, and historically the average age of election winners is 55 years old. Each candidate is given a score based on their age, with 55 earning a perfect score of 100pts, and decreasing by 5pts for every year either older or younger (any age >75 getting 0pts).

Experience — If the candidate has served less than a full term as governor, they get 10pts per year served with a maximum of 50pts. Additionally, each candidate receives up to 50pts based on the level of their office prior to being elected governor, with full score for a federal office (e.g., U. S. Senator), 25pts for a state-level office (e.g., State Attorney General or Lt. Governor), and no points if they had no prior political experience.

Home State — Each candidate receives a score based on how likely their home state is to determine the outcome of the election. I gave a maximum of 100pts for states with less than a 1% margin in the 2020 election, decreasing by 10pts for every additional 3% in the winner's margin.

Vote Margin — Finally, candidates who performed far ahead of Biden's 2020 election results in their last election received 10pts for every 2% over Biden's margin in their state, with a maximum of 100pts for 20%. For this category I decided to give a negative score of up to -100pts for an -20% under-performance relative to Biden.

Results:

Based on a simple average of these four metrics, the candidates receive the following scores:

Interestingly, the two most commonly named replacements (Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro) received the highest scores in this analysis. Both candidates are in their early fifties, serve in competitive states, and outperformed Biden by large margins ( 7.8 and 13.6, respectively). Shapiro received a slightly lower score since he has only served as governor for one full year.

Andy Beshear also received a relatively high score due to his 30pt win over Biden, but is brought down somewhat due to Kentucky being a solid red state. Laura Kelly, also performed well in a relatively close state but is harmed by her advanced age (74 years old).

Other frequently discussed names like J. B. Pritzker and Gavin Newsom score nearer to the bottom of the list, since they under-performed relative to Biden in safe Democratic states.

As a point of comparison, I decided to include Kamala Harris, although I decided to ignore her performance relative to Biden since she has never run at the top of a ticket in a partisan race (at least since 2014, when she was elected attorney general, but that race was nowhere near as publicized).

Here is a link to the full table.