JD Vance has the worst polling for a VP pick post-convention in history — yet MAGA doesn’t care

JD Vance has faced some backlash in his first few weeks as Donald Trump’s running mate.

His recently resurfaced comments branding Kamala Harris and women without kids as “childless cat ladies” who “want to make the country miserable” have drawn widespread criticism — even from Republican Trey Gowdy, who hosted Vance on Fox News on Sunday.

In light of these factors, the choice of Vance as Trump’s running mate was a bold one, and the numbers show Republicans themselves are undecided on their support.

In some ways, Vance has an impressive resume of his own, with a background that includes Yale Law School, the Marines and venture capital. Most famously, his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, received widespread success after its publication in 2016.

But in many other respects, Trump plucked Vance from political obscurity. He was elected to the US Senate for the first time in 2022, yet leapfrogged over other VP candidates who had been in politics for decades. And his record of publicly disparaging Trump has caused its own fair share of raised eyebrows.

Now, Vance has the lowest favorability rating of any VP pick immediately after the party convention since the 1980s, with a net negative favorability of -6 points, according to CNN. In recent years, the average for a VP nominee has been +18 points at this stage.

Even Trump’s former White House communications director has warned that the Vance pick is already a “disaster”.

Just 39 per cent of US adults think that Vance is a good choice overall for Trump’s running mate, according to a YouGov poll for The Economist. A third think that Vance is a bad choice, while the last third are unsure.

But the most striking divide is between Republican voters themselves, who are far from united on the