New national polls show JD Vance is the most unpopular vice presidential candidate in recent American history.
Both 538 and Navigator recently released polls showing more Americans dislike the Republican vice presidential candidate than like him. And the Navigator poll shows the more voters know about Vance and his positions, the more they dislike him.
CBS News and 538 report Vance is more unpopular than Sarah Palin and Tim Kaine. Palin was Republican candidate John McCain’s running mate in 2008. Kaine was Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016.
Some of the attributes Republican leaders have touted about Vance include his family values and his Catholic faith. But whatever value those bring is outweighed by a general dislike of him as a person and of his newly conservative political views.
At the same time, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is polling near the top of the charts, bested only by the favorability of John Edwards, who was the running mate for Democrat John Kerry in 2004.
In net favorability ratings, Vance falls 14 points behind Walz, according to Daniel Rakich of 538: Americans were cool toward Vance from the start: “Three days after he was announced as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, his net favorability rating was -3 percentage points (26% favorable, 29% unfavorable). But since then, he has faced a rash of bad headlines about his past comments calling Harris a “childless cat lady,” his past support for a national abortion ban and even a baseless internet rumor about having sex with a couch. The poor rollout pushed his net favorability rating down even further, to -9 points.
“That is a historically bad net favorability rating for a vice presidential candidate. We applied our current favorability polling average formula to old polls of six freshly minted VP picks from the past 20 years, and none of them ever had an average net favorability rating as low as Vance’s.”
Rakich acknowledges most Americans probably think of Palin as the most unpopular vice presidential candidate in modern history. But the numbers tell a different story. She was popular before she was unpopular.
“It may surprise some folks that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — who is usually remembered as the worst VP pick in modern times — had ‘only’ a -2-point net favorability rating by the end of the 2008 campaign. But people forget that she actually started off as an energizing and popular pick. On Sept. 10, 2008, one week after her well-received acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, her net favorability rating was +21 points (47% favorable, 25% unfavorable).
“But from that moment on, the more Americans learned about Palin, the more they disliked her. Her poor answers to interview questions created a perception that she was unprepared for the presidency, and an ethics scandal back home in Alaska tarnished her image as a reformer. By Election Day, her unfavorable rating had shot up 20 points (to 45%), while her favorable rating was down 3 points (to 44%).”
Navigator polling shows Vance with a 29% approval rating and a 45% disapproval rating.
Respondents told Navigator they are concerned about his comments that Americans without children have “no physical commitment to the future of this country” and should not have the same voting rights as Americans with children; that Americans without children should be taxed more; that people should stay in marriages that may be violent; that he “attacked the Affordable Care Act and would allow insurance companies to discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions like asthma, cancer and diabetes.”
Navigator also cited polling concerns about Vance’s support for abortion bans with no exceptions for rape or incest, his support for a national ban on abortion, and his being endorsed by neo-Nazi groups.
Dislike for Vance grows, however, the more Americans learn about him and his positions, Navigator reported.
“Initially, Americans say they disapprove of Donald Trump selecting JD Vance to be his vice presidential nominee by 5 points (37% approve – 42% disapprove), including independents who disapprove by 14 points (25% approve – 39% disapprove). After reading statements and comments made by Vance, net disapproval of Trump’s selection of Vance shifts from net -5 to net -28 (30% approve – 58% disapprove), including a 25-point negative shift among independents … and a 45-point negative shift among non-MAGA Republicans.”
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