Hillbilly Eulogy: JD Vance's approval rating nosedives

JD Vance must've thought he was immune from the Trump Curse: those showing the greatest loyalty pay the greatest price.

Rudy Giuliani — disbarred and bankrupt, Michael Cohen — disbarred and imprisoned. Michael Navarro — jailed for contempt of Congress. Steve Bannon — jailed for contempt of Congress. Elliott Broidy — pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges. Allen Weisselberg — pleaded guilty to tax fraud, Roger Stone – convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering.

The list is endless: Michael Flynn, Roger Manafort, Brad Parscale, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark. Their lives are much worse off for being Trump surrogates. Only Steven Miller seems to have avoided the curse, but that's because somewhere along the way a warlock cursed him into becoming a barking seal and it may have provided him immunity.

Trump sees people as oranges. If they come too close, he sucks out the juice and spits out the husk, usually complaining about the taste afterward.

Vance hasn't been in Trump's juice-sucking orbit for long, but he's already withering. A Washington Post analysis by Aaron Blake reveals Vance's decline from unpleasant to revolting:

A half-dozen polls have now tested views of Vance more than once in the last few weeks. In each of them, his already-underwhelming image ratings have deteriorated — sometimes significantly.

And crucially, his struggles appear particularly pronounced among educated voters and women. That would suggest that his derisive past comments about childless women are indeed proving to be liabilities.

But first, the big picture. Vance's net favorable rating (favorable vs. unfavorable) is now nine points underwater in the FiveThirtyEight average. That's a marked contrast to other recent running mates, who have generally polled in popular territory.

And notably, three of the repeated polls show about as many people view Vance very unfavorably as have any kind of positive view of him.

His net favorable ratings have dropped:

– Three points in Reuters-Ipsos polls between July 16 and July 28 (the end dates for the polls).
– Five points in Economist-YouGov polls between July 23 and July 30.
– Eight points in AP-NORC polls between July 15 and July 29.
– Nine points in other YouGov polls (that weren't sponsored by a media outlet) between July 15 and July 25.
– Nine points in ABC News-Ipsos polls between July 20 and July 27.
– And six points in a new NPR/PBS/Marist College poll, versus its July 22 poll.