JD Vance Less Popular Than Sarah Palin Was As Tim Walz Scores Poll Win

Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee JD Vance is less popular than Sarah Palin, according to polling.
It comes as Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz scored a win in the polls, with more people approving of the Minnesota governor than Vance.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling tracker, Vance’s net favorability/unfavorability rating has plummeted from -3 points in July to -9.5 points, with 33.2 percent of voters holding a favorable opinion of the Ohio senator compared to 44.2 percent of voters who hold an unfavorable opinion.
Newsweek has contacted representative of JD Vance for comment via email.
No poll has shown he has a positive approval rating since before July 19, according to FiveThirtyEight, with polls putting his favorability/unfavorability rating at between -1 and -17.
Palin had a catastrophic fall in popularity when running alongside John McCain, peaking at +21 favorability in August 2008, before ultimately plummeting by 23 percent.
The only VP choice who was more unpopular than Palin was Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine, whose net favorability was at just -4 percent on Election Day in 2016, substantially lower than Republican VP Mike Pence, who had a +5 favorability rating.
In contrast, Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz has had a much better time in the polls, according to FiveThirtyEight, with a 4.7-point net favorability score. On average, 37.7 percent of voters viewing him favorably, while 32.9 percent view him unfavorably, according to the aggregator.
Both his favorability and unfavorability ratings have risen since he entered the ticket earlier this month. No poll has shown Walz has a negative approval rating since he entered the race, with every poll putting his favorability/unfavorability rating between +1 and +13, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Meanwhile, an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted between August 9 and 13 showed more Americans approve of Walz’s selection as vice president than Vance, with 52 percent approving of Harris’ choice of Walz, compared with 45 percent who approve of Trump’s selection of Vance. Forty-four percent disapprove of the Walz pick, compared with 50 percent disapproval for Trump’s choice.
The poll also showed that 39 percent have a favorable impression of Walz as a person, while 30 percent see him unfavorably. That compares with favorable-unfavorable rating for Vance of 32 percent-42 percent.
Vance faced much criticism after he entered the race when a 2021 interview resurfaced, in which he told the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the country was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
“It’s just a basic fact that if you look at Kamala Harris, [Secretary of Transportation] Pete Buttigieg, AOC [Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” he said.
The remarks prompted criticism from Harris’ husband’s ex-wife, who reminded Vance that Harris has two stepchildren whom she co-parents with her and Doug Emhoff.
“She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present,” Kerstin Emhoff told CNN. “I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”
Vance later defended his comments in an interview with CNN, saying that he was not criticizing people who don’t have children, but rather he was “criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”