JD Vance Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

We hope Donald Trump kept the receipt – JD Vance has turned out to be a worse number two than even we could’ve imagined. He’s breaking polling records in the worst way possible and making history as the “least-liked vice-presidential candidate” in over forty years. Vance has left Trump and the GOP flailing, and MAGA Republicans in the House are openly slamming Vance as “the worst choice of all the options” who “adds nothing to the Trump ticket.”

Key Point: “Vance’s extremism, of course, extends far beyond abortion and gender. His selection validates concerns about Trump’s own authoritarianism, as well as the radical Project 2025—from which Trump has weakly tried to disentangle himself. At every turn, Vance exacerbates Trump’s biggest weaknesses. It’s still not clear what, if anything, he brings to the table.”

Harry Enten, CNN: “JD Vance is making history as the least liked VP nominee (non-incumbent) since 1980 following his/her party’s convention. He’s the first to have a net negative favorable rating. 

“Not surprising given how weak he ran in Ohio in 2022. Far worse than the average Ohio Republican.”

Enten: “If JD Vance’s popularity in his home region (-16 pts) is any sign, it won’t get better for Vance nationally (where he’s historically unpopular).”

The New Republic: Is J.D. Vance the Worst Vice Presidential Pick Ever?

By: Alex Shephard

• And that campaign now had a huge vulnerability: J.D. Vance, who Trump had selected as his running mate just a week earlier. Arguably the most extreme candidate Trump could have chosen, Vance is also a neophyte: 39 years old, he has served less than two years in the Senate and otherwise has no experience in government. In the new race in which Republicans found themselves, Vance not only worsened everything, he exacerbated Trump’s biggest weaknesses: his own radicalism, particularly on abortion, and his status as the oldest presidential nominee in American history.
  
• The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta found more than a little running-mate buyer’s remorse. The decision to anoint Vance, “campaign officials acknowledged, was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.” Whoops!
  
• Voters have only gotten a short look at Vance the vice presidential candidate. But they really do not like him. His post-convention approval rating was a dismal minus six, the lowest ever recorded. (The average vice president since 2000, meanwhile, has come in at a more than respectable plus 19.) Many of these voters are repelled by Vance’s obvious fraudulence. But they also are repelled by what he stands for—which is itself very bad news for Trump.

• Vance exacerbates Trump’s greatest political weakness. He is an anti-abortion zealot who has advocated for a national ban and compared the medical procedure to slavery. He has defended bans even for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, saying, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” He recently voted for a bill that would have banned in vitro fertilization.
  
• Vance’s extremism, of course, extends far beyond abortion and gender. His selection validates concerns about Trump’s own authoritarianism, as well as the radical Project 2025—from which Trump has weakly tried to disentangle himself. At every turn, Vance exacerbates Trump’s biggest weaknesses. It’s still not clear what, if anything, he brings to the table.

Business Insider: JD Vance breaks polling records in the worst way

By: Alice Tecotzky and John L. Dorman 

• Vice-presidential nominees typically receive a ratings bump after their party’s convention, but Sen. JD Vance is bucking the tradition.

• On the heels of last week’s Republican National Convention, the Ohio senator is the least-liked vice-presidential candidate since 1980, CNN found in a polling analysis. It noted the data applied to nonincumbents.

• Since 2000, vice-presidential nominees typically have had a net-positive rating immediately following the convention, at plus 19 points. Vance, however, is polling at minus 6 points just one week after accepting the vice-presidential nomination and officially embarking on the campaign trail, the network found.

• The freshman lawmaker’s lower-than-normal approval ratings are not an anomaly, as Vance has long polled behind other Republicans.

Newsweek: JD Vance Is the Least Liked VP Nominee in Decades, According to Polls

By: Jordan King

• JD Vance is the first non-incumbent vice presidential nominee to have a net-negative favorable rating after a convention since 1980, according to poll numbers.

• The Ohio senator’s net favorable rating was at -6 points after the Republican National Convention (RNC), according to CNN’s senior data reporter Harry Enten. This is far behind the general average since 2000, which was +19 points.

• Enten explained the numbers on Erin Burnett OutFront, which cited The Associated Press as the source.

• “It’s in negative net territory, negative—look at that—negative,” he said. “I have gone all the way back since 1980. He is the first guy, immediately following a convention—a VP pick—who actually has a net-negative favorable rating. The average since 2000 is +19 points. J.D. Vance [is] making history in the completely wrong way.”

• Enten went on to say that VPs are usually popular, but he said Vance was “dragging Trump down.”

Washington Post Analysis: Could Republicans get buyer’s remorse with J.D. Vance?

By: Aaron Blake

• Vance’s only campaign — for Senate in 2022 — was nothing to write home about. Despite winning, he polled as unpopular and performed significantly worse than any other statewide Ohio GOP candidate.

• At least five quality polls out this week have gauged Vance’s image, and each shows that more people dislike him than like him. They show he is between two and nine points underwater.

• As CNN’s Harry Enten noted Tuesday, that appears to be without recent precedent. Vice-presidential picks usually get a honeymoon period, and none has been in such negative territory so soon after their debut on the biggest stage.
  
• Vance appears to struggle with independent voters. In four of the five polls, his unfavorable rating with them is double digits higher than his favorable rating. (The fifth poll shows him eight points underwater.)
  
• He doesn’t appear to have improved his image in recent days. The Reuters-Ipsos poll showed him going from six points negative last week to seven points negative today. CNN showed him going from seven points negative last month to six points negative now. In both cases, many more voters have rendered judgments on him than before, but those reviews haven’t been positive.

The Hill: Some House Republicans slam Vance as Trump’s VP pick: ‘The worst choice’

By: Mychael Schnell

• “He was the worst choice of all the options. It was so bad I didn’t even think it was possible,” said one House Republican. “Anti-Ukraine, more of a populist. He adds nothing to the Trump ticket. He energizes the same people that love Trump.”

• “I think if you were to ask many people around this building, nine out of 10 on our side would say he’s the wrong pick,” a second House Republican said. “He’s the only person who can do serious damage.”

• A seventh House Republican questioned the breadth of Vance’s résumé, wondering if he has enough experience to hold office that is a heartbeat away from the presidency.

• “I don’t know that he has the experience to step into that job,” the lawmaker said. “He’s experienced, I don’t wanna say he’s not experienced and he’s not smart or that I didn’t like the book and his upbringing… But I still rank other candidates higher because they have deeper, more tested experience.”

• Vance’s previous criticisms of Trump have also caught the eye of some House Republicans. 

• Vance hammered Trump as unfit during the 2016 campaign before changing his tune after Trump won the election, later becoming one of his most ardent supporters on Capitol Hill.

• But during his period of discontent, Vance publicly called Trump “noxious” and “reprehensible,” and, in a private Facebook message, referred to the then-candidate as “America’s Hitler.”

• The early broadsides, however, have stuck with some House Republicans, further fueling the confusion over Trump’s vice presidential selection.

• “He’s incredibly disingenuous… He called him Hitler, like, yesterday,” one of the Republicans said. “Now he’s the most pro-Trump person in the world. And I just — I don’t trust him.”

Axios: Some Republicans express buyer’s remorse over Vance VP pick

By: Zachary Basu and Andrew Solender

• “The road got a lot harder. He was the only pick that wasn’t the safe pick. And I think everyone has now realized that,” one House Republican told Axios, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss his party’s VP nominee.

• “On the whole, the feeling is: doesn’t add much,” another House Republican said of Trump picking Vance.
  
• Coming out of the GOP convention, Vance is the least-liked non-incumbent VP nominee since at least 1980 — and the first to register a net negative favorability rating, according to CNN data analyst Harry Enten.

• The freshman senator and “Hillbilly Elegy” author won his 2022 election in Ohio by 6 percentage points — 2 points less than Trump’s winning margin in the state two years earlier.
  
• Vance, who faced the popular and well-funded Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, underperformed every statewide Republican on the ticket that year, running 20 points behind Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

CNN: Vance confronts upheaval and uncertainty in first 10 days as Trump’s running mate

By: Steve Contorno and Kit Maher

• But Vance remains a largely unknown quantity, and Democrats have moved quickly to attack the Republican over his past stances, especially his opposition to abortion in almost every instance.

• On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee circulated a clip of Vance comparing abortion to slavery and asserted in a statement: “The Trump-Vance ticket is running on a cruel, dangerous, and wildly unpopular anti-choice agenda that the American people will reject this November.”

• “I’m running as the vice presidential nominee, not the presidential nominee, and if I want my views on abortion to dominate the Republican Party, then I’d run for president. I didn’t, and I haven’t,” Vance said on a plane ride from Ohio to Virginia earlier this week. “Donald Trump ran for president, and I think that it’s important as a party we say the voters have decided here. Trump having won has decided what the platform is.”

• The unlikely pairing of Trump with a freshman senator half his age will be closely watched in the coming months for signs of discord, especially given the former president’s past treatment of his onetime running mate Mike Pence. Vance’s previous outspoken objections to Trump have already generated fodder for Democrats looking to paint the Ohio Republican as an ambitious shape shifter willing to say what it takes to get closer to power.