Vance Gets MAGA Popularity Boost from 2024 Republican Convention

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Sen. JD Vance’s elevation as former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate did tremendous work to elevate awareness of him among the American electorate, especially among the former president’s 2020 base. 

According to Morning Consult’s latest surveys, Vance — who came into the vice presidential nod subject to equal levels of favorable and unfavorable opinions among voters — saw nearly identical growth in opinions on both sides of the ledger, while the share who said they’d never heard of him fell from 35% to 13%. By contrast, the convention did little to move Trump’s standing among the overall electorate, where his favorability rating remains in the red.

When it comes to Trump's 2020 base, the share of voters with favorable opinions of Vance nearly doubled, from 38% to 66%, underscoring Trump’s strength as a “MAGA” kingmaker and making the Ohioan a reliable messenger to the key group.

At this early stage in the Trump-Vance campaign, the No. 2 figure faces far less negative — and far less intense — views from the national electorate compared with Trump. 

While 44% of voters “strongly” dislike Trump, only 26% say the same of Vance. The gap is similar among independent voters, and even stronger when it comes to unaffiliated women, who are more than twice as likely to hold “strongly” unfavorable views of Trump as they are of Vance, 50% to 24%. 

In the national data, about a quarter of voters have no opinion or haven’t yet heard of Vance. That figure is not too far off of his standing in Ohio, where he lacks the same level of  awareness awarded by voters to vulnerable Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown — his Senate counterpart who is aligned with a more populist bloc on the left — according to our tracking of senatorial approval.

In a place where voters should know Vance best, 22% say they don’t know or have no opinion about him, including higher shares among voters under the age of 45, non-white and white voters who don’t have college degrees — the latter representing the epitome of Vance’s self-proclaimed Appalachian roots. Vance has no popularity advantage over Brown among the overall electorate in the state, as well as among Ohioans of various ages or races.

Among white voters, Vance lacks popularity among the college educated, but his net approval rating among those without college degrees matches that of Brown.

The bottom line

Vance is joining Trump’s campaign as a new star among Trump-aligned voters, but still lacks some awareness from the larger electorate. This could allow Trump’s new running mate to appeal more than the ticket-topper with groups such as independent women and college educated voters, but many still dislike him — and his official association with Trump could make that worse as the campaign inches toward Election Day.

If his home state of Ohio is evidence, Vance isn’t an expert at breaking through to voters. And on his home turf, he lacks the popularity of his Democratic counterpart — offering an outline of how Democrats may try to push back against him in other states that have been harmed by the decline of domestic manufacturing. His standing at home could also hamper his ability to try to weaken Brown in a state that will be key to the Democratic Party’s uphill fight to hold the Senate this November.