In a fresh polling blow for the Republican vice presidential nominee, almost a third of voters said they thought JD Vance would hurt former President Donald Trump‘s election chances.
The poll, conducted by YouGov among 1,567 adult citizens, also revealed that less than a quarter (24 percent) believed the Ohio senator would help Trump’s chances, whilst 29 percent said he hurt them, 34 percent said he would make no difference, and 13 percent were unsure.
Vice President Kamala Harris‘ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was more favorably received, with just 16 percent of registered voters thinking he would hurt Harris’ campaign. A total of 42 percent answered that he would help her chances, with 15 percent unsure and 27 percent believing it would make no difference.
Newsweek has contacted Vance and the Trump campaign for comment via email outside of standard working hours.
YouGov’s survey also asked respondents whether they thought Walz and Vance were good choices as running mate for their respective presidential hopefuls.
Slightly under half (47 percent) said Walz was a good choice, and 41 percent said the same of Vance.
Additionally, 34 percent of registered voters thought Walz was a “very or somewhat” bad choice, whilst 42 percent believed Vance to be poor choice.
Vance has been stung by a string of recent polls against Walz.
On August 8, two days after Harris announced her pick for vice president, a YouGov survey found that Vance’s approval rating had dropped by three points between two July polls.
A Marist Poll for NPR and PBS conducted between August 1 and 4 found that his net favorability had dropped five points since July.
Exclusive polling for Newsweek, conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies did find that two thirds of Republican voters backed the senator, however.
Vance is set to debate his Democratic counterpart on October 1, on CBS News.
Walz already appears to have committed, saying, “see you October 1, JD” in a post on X. Vance, however, is yet to explicitly confirm his attendance.
If elected alongside Trump in November, Vance would be one of the most politically inexperienced vice presidents in U.S. history.
“In terms of the sort of government experience that most VP nominees have (i.e. Prior experience as U.S. senator, state governor, member of U.S. House, or in high federal executive position), Vance has less experience than any VP nominee since newspaper publisher Frank Knox in 1936,” Joel Goldstein, a vice presidential expert and scholar who has written multiple books on the vice presidency, told Newsweek.
“The only others with so little experience were Spiro T. Agnew and Governor Sarah Palin, each of whom had prior experience in local government.”
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