New polling shows Vice President JD Vance's chances for becoming the next Republican presidential nominee have taken a big hit.
The vice president enjoyed a 20-point lead over his chief rival to the MAGA throne – Donald Trump Jr. – in an August poll, but that advantage has been cut in half as the president's popularity plummets, reported The Independent.
“The issue for Vance is that he’s so closely tied to this administration,” said Mark Shanahan, an associate professor at the University of Sussex. “For the moment, he has to be in lockstep with the president. If he’s not, he simply isn’t doing the job he has been elected to fulfill. So, while Trump’s polling is languishing, Vance suffers.”
Vance held a 36-10 lead over President Donald Trump's namesake son in a McLaughlin and Associates poll in August and a 38-20 lead over him in October, but the younger Trump narrowed the gap to 34-24 in the most recent poll conducted this month.
The president's own polling has collapsed in recent months, and every major poll has found he has a negative rating for the first time.
"Even a Fox News poll suggested that 61 percent of respondents think that Trump’s administration has damaged the economy, with just 38 percent approving of his economic strategy," The Independent reported. "A further 76 percent said that they view the economy negatively, with Fox analysts pointing to the fact that this is 'worse than the 67 percent who felt that way in July and the 70 percent who said the same at the end of former President Biden’s term.'"
Surveys conducted by YouGov, Gallup, Ipsos, R.M.G, Research, Morning Consult and Quinnipiac found similar negative results for the president, and that unpopularity has dragged down JD Vance but somehow lifted the 79-year-old president's son.