Ryan is the most conservative Congressmember to be nominated as VP since 1900.

[7,052,770]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The Dims like to pretend he was a republican.

What?  There is nothing remotely Republican or right-wing about him.

[The Mikado]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The Dims like to pretend he was a republican.

Also, no Palin?

In what universe was Henry Wallace a Republican?  He was so left-wing people thought he was a dupe of Moscow.

[they don't love you like i love you]

I thought Wallace started out as a Republican, but then switched to the Democrats after the New Deal.

[The Mikado]

I thought Wallace started out as a Republican, but then switched to the Democrats after the New Deal.

Yeah, but he was a Democrat for his entire political career, though (became a Dem in 1933).

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I thought Wallace started out as a Republican, but then switched to the Democrats after the New Deal.

Yeah, but he was a Democrat for his entire political career, though (became a Dem in 1933).

I believe he switched to the Democratic Party shortly after his appointment.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'm sorry, the ideological classification of vice-presidents that you have posted is completely absurd. How exactly is John Nance Garner the most liberal vice-president on that list?

What part of the data do you take issue with? Those ideology scores aren't just pulled out of thin air. They're DW-NOMINATE scores which are used in political science as the gold standard for comparing the ideologies of legislators. Garner's score there is an objective measure based on his voting behavior relative to the rest of his congress (taking into account every roll call vote in a given congress).

DW-NOMINATE does a very poor job of comparing people from different eras.  Also, they may label their axis as being Liberal-Conservative, but it really is more of a Democratic-Republican axis than Liberal-Conservative.

Hence the argument that the chart is a useful measure of partisanship rather than anything else. I think Silver's point regarding Ryan stands if we're talking about partisanship rather than ideology per se, though.

In that case, Ryan is the vp choice who was least likely to vote against his party.

It's more accurate to say he's the least likely to vote with the other party - which isn't the same thing  (see for example, Ron Paul's extreme score while he votes against the majority position of his party all the time).