Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, attends a campaign event in Glendale, Ariz., Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance has the lowest vice-presidential-nominee approval rating since 1980. He also, historically, has become the first VP candidate to have a net negative favorable rating one week following the party’s national convention, according to CNN’s data analyst Harry Enten.

Since 2000, the vice presidential nominee’s approval rating has typically averaged around plus 19 percentage points following their respective party’s convention. Vance was polling at minus six points after last week’s Republican National Convention, in comparison.

Since the announcement, Vance has received a lot of backlash following multiple offensive comments that have resurfaced. 

Vance has never been shy regarding his stance on reproductive rights. He has vocally supported a national abortion ban with no exceptions, including cases of rape and incest. In October 2021, he shared his belief that abortion is “socially destructive” — expressing that the procedure is similar to slavery. 

“There’s something comparable between abortion and slavery, and that while the people who obviously suffer the most are those subjected to it, I think it has this morally distorting effect on the entire society,” Vance said during an interview with The Catholic Current.

Vance has also made misogynistic comments about female Democrats, including Trump’s likely opponent Vice President Kamala Harris. In July 2021, he said those without biological children have no direct stake in our country.

“We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via the corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” Vance said in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

In an attempt to clean up these comments, Vance claimed it was sarcasm, despite standing with the substance of what was said. He believes the “[Democratic] party has pursued a set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.” 

“If the Republican Party is trying to improve its image with women, I don’t think that this is working,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told Politico on Tuesday. “To be so derogatory in this way is offensive to me as a woman.”

Women are a key factor in the outcome of the general election this November. In the 2020 election, Trump trailed Biden on women’s votes by 15 points. Vance’s recent controversies could be a potential liability in terms of gaining more independent women votes. Currently in several swing state polls, Harris is leading Trump in women voters by nine points or more.

Republican lawmakers and some of Trump’s colleagues questioned the choice leading up to the official announcement. A few urged the former president to go a different route, suggesting other candidates that might bring in more swing voters.

“The road got a lot harder. He was the only pick that wasn’t the safe pick. And I think everyone has now realized that,” a House Republican told Axios anonymously.

In the past, Ohio held much significance in the outcome of the national election. Spanning from 1964 to 2016, the winner of the state went on to win the presidency. However, the state’s political climate has seen a shift toward Republicans in recent years. 

Trump won the state in both 2016 and 2020. And a recent Remington Research poll of Ohio also shows a lead of plus ten points for the Republican party in the coming election. 

Because of this, Vance will likely have no direct impact on the outcome of the state, despite being an Ohio senator. Though he won his election in 2022, the margin of victory over Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan was the worst across the ballot, underperforming every other Republican candidate in Ohio.

“The margin that Vance put up was the weakest performance of any major Republican. It’s worse than Trump did in Ohio. It’s worse than Mike DeWine did in Ohio. The JD Vance pick makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective,” Enten said on Vance’s election statistics.