House of Cards: Claire Underwood – could the president's wife ever be vice president?

The latest season of Netflix’s hit political drama saw the Underwoods go further than they ever have before.

In an electrifying run of episodes, Frank and Claire manipulated the Democratic National Convention to get Claire’s name on the presidential ticket.

While publicly supporting Secretary Of State Catherine Durant for the vice presidential nomination, Frank had a lone senator nominate give Claire a single vote.

Claire’s home state of Texas followed suit by casting all of its votes for its “native daughter”, and after a well-timed leak to damage Durant’s reputation, more states did the same.

Ultimately Claire won the nomination, and the season ended with the Underwood-Underwood campaign in full swing.

But could this happen in real life?

Could the First Lady ever be vice president?

Theoretically there is no reason why a first lady could not also be vice president, but she would have to live in a different state to her husband in order to receive votes.

Under the US constitution, electorates can’t vote for the president and the vice president from the same state as their own.

In 2000, George W Bush encountered this problem when he chose fellow Texan Dick Cheney to be his running mate.

Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at California’s Claremont McKenna College, explained to TheWrap: “There was a problem: Cheney was living in Texas at the time.

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“If they were both to run, one of them would have to forfeit the electoral votes of Texas. 

“Which means Al Gore would have become President and Joe Lieberman would have become Vice President.

Cheney switched his voting residence to Wyoming to avoid the conflict.

Likewise, Claire could have used her mother’s home in Texas as her voting residence.

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Could the DNC nominate by open convention?

A vice presidential candidate has been nominated by open convention in real life at least once before.

Pitney explauned: “Adlai Stevenson was the certain Democratic nominee for president in 1956.

“In order to create some excitement at the convention, he threw the vice presidential nomination open. He said, ‘you pick’.”