JD Vance has broken through during the 2024 campaign in all the wrong ways

Polls show Sen. JD Vance of Ohio is the least liked of the major presidential nominees and their respective running mates.

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Sen. JD Vance is one of the least-liked major vice presidential candidates in recent memory.On Tuesday, Vance will go against Gov. Tim Walz in the first and only vice presidential debate.It’s his biggest opportunity yet to reintroduce himself to the nation.

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio would like to reintroduce himself.

He’ll get that chance on Tuesday night when the Republican vice presidential nominee debates Gov. Tim Walz in front of his largest audience yet.

He needs it.

Vice presidential candidates are traditionally near after-thoughts in the presidential race. One of the biggest moments during the 2020 debate was when a fly landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head. Vance hasn’t been so lucky.

Vance’s years’ worth of comments about women without children, sometimes directed to top Democratic officials, sometimes not, have come back to bite him in the worst way. After being anointed former President Donald Trump’s MAGA heir apparent during a triumphant convention, Vance has become the least popular vice presidential nominee in recent memory. Even Sarah Palin was more popular than him.

“I think it was predictable when Trump picked him, he wasn’t an outreach pick, “Joel Goldstein, a renowned vice presidential scholar, told Business Insider. “He wasn’t designed to expand the party’s appeal, and the things he has said so far, he’s sort of played the role of Trump’s Trump.”

Now, even Taylor Swift calls herself a “childless cat lady.” (Vance has maintained his sarcastic comments were taken out of context, but that hasn’t quelled the frustration.)

“I live in Philadelphia and there are signs all over people’s windows, you know, ‘Childless Cat Lady for Harris,’ I think they are cleverly using that as a mobilizing tool,” Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics, recently told Business Insider.

It remains to be seen how much it will matter. Vance himself has said that voters will likely just choose between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. While voters can learn a lot about a presidential hopeful from their selection of a running mate, decades of research shows vice presidential nominees have little effect on who actually wins.

Vance has even foreshadowed that despite his sometimes blistering attacks on Walz, he will focus most of the debate on prosecuting “the case against Kamala Harris.”

“I can check my ego at the door. Most people are voting for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or frankly against one of those candidates,” Vance told CNBC after the debate between Trump and Harris earlier this month.

Goldstein said it would be a “strategic mistake” for either hopeful to get too bogged down with their direct opponent.

“The debate has an impact in presenting these two people as ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency or not, but vice presidential debates are primarily about the presidential candidates and their ability to lead and the merits of their program,” said Goldstein, a professor emeritus at Saint Louis University law school.

Democrats are giddy about his performance thus far. Harris’ campaign sold “childless cat lady” merchandise when Vance’s old comments went viral. And just as that controversy subsided, Vance earned the ire of even some fellow Republicans, including his own governor, for pushing debunked claims that Haitian migrants were eating pets in the small town of Springfield, Ohio.

“I think it was a terrible pick by Trump, and Vance, every time he opens his mouth, confirms that,” Bradley Tusk, a cofounder of venture capitalist firm Tusk Venture Partners and a Democratic political strategist, told Business Insider. “As smart as JD Vance is, and he wrote a really good book, that doesn’t mean he’s prepared for the bright lights of a presidential campaign.”

The polls are clear about where Vance stands. According to FiveThirtyEight’s averages, Vance is the least popular major figure in the field. He’s at -11.3 percentage points, Trump is at -9.5, Harris is just slightly above water at +0.7, and Walz is at +3.8. No one loves Harris or Walz, they just really don’t like Vance.

While some compare his trajectory to Palin’s, the then-Alaska governor actually started with huge numbers. As FiveThirtyEight pointed out, she ended the Republican National Convention with a +21 favorability rating. She eventually crashed to -2 by the end of the election, but she was far better than Vance is now.

Palin ran in an era when hyperpartisanship had yet taken complete hold, but Vance’s issue is that he’s grown more unpopular over time. He’s also particularly anemic among women. A recent AP-NORC poll found that only about 25% of women have a positive view of him.

Vance’s only silver lining is that the same poll showed that just over 2 out of 10 registered voters still don’t know enough about him. With tens of millions of Americans expected to tune in Tuesday night, he has one last chance to make a better impression.