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JD Vance has faced some backlash in his first few weeks as Donald Trump’s running mate.
His recently resurfaced comments branding Kamala Harris and women without kids as “childless cat ladies” who “want to make the country miserable” have drawn widespread criticism — even from Republican Trey Gowdy, who hosted Vance on Fox News on Sunday.
In light of these factors, the choice of Vance as Trump’s running mate was a bold one, and the numbers show Republicans themselves are undecided on their support.
In some ways, Vance has an impressive resume of his own, with a background that includes Yale Law School, the Marines and venture capital. Most famously, his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, received widespread success after its publication in 2016.
But in many other respects, Trump plucked Vance from political obscurity. He was elected to the US Senate for the first time in 2022, yet leapfrogged over other VP candidates who had been in politics for decades. And his record of publicly disparaging Trump has caused its own fair share of raised eyebrows.
Now, Vance has the lowest favorability rating of any VP pick immediately after the party convention since the 1980s, with a net negative favorability of -6 points, according to CNN. In recent years, the average for a VP nominee has been +18 points at this stage.
Even Trump’s former White House communications director has warned that the Vance pick is already a “disaster”.
Just 39 per cent of US adults think that Vance is a good choice overall for Trump’s running mate, according to a YouGov poll for The Economist. A third think that Vance is a bad choice, while the last third are unsure.
But the most striking divide is between Republican voters themselves, who are far from united on the new candidate.
Overall, almost three-quarters (74 per cent) of Republicans say that Vance is a good choice, despite the candidate’s negative net approval ratings.
Republicans who identify as ‘MAGA’ (supportive of the Trump-centered Make America Great Again movement within the GOP) are twice as likely to think that Trump made a “very good choice” in picking Vance, with 61 per cent strongly supporting the decision.
But non-MAGA Republicans are far less enthused, with only 34 per cent strongly supporting Vance as the running mate. Among this group, who tend to comprise a less right-wing faction of the Republican Party, a third are still unsure on how they stand over Vance, while one in 10 already think he was a bad pick.
Unsurprisingly, most Democrats (58 per cent) think that Vance is a bad choice for number two on the Republican ticket, with 44 per cent of those seeing the move as “very bad”.
Some 15 per cent of Democrats, however, believe that Vance is a good choice for Trump’s campaign.
Independent voters were most likely (46 per cent) to say they were unsure whether Vance was a good pick. Many voters in this key group clearly have yet to make up their minds, and are waiting to see how things play out as the election cycle continues.
Overall, Independents were slightly more likely to support the choice (30 per cent) rather than disagree with it (24 per cent).
