How JD Vance Won Over the American People

Rarely in politics does a leader become more popular the more time he spends in the spotlight. But that appears to be the phenomenon currently underway with Vice President JD Vance.

According to an Atlas Insights poll out late last month, 51 percent of Americans say they have a “positive image” of Vance, compared to 48 percent who say they have a “negative image” of the former U.S. Senator, businessman, and best-selling author. That figure represents a dramatic increase from the first iteration of the Atlas poll, conducted in July 2024 shortly after Vance was selected as President Donald Trump’s running mate, which found that just 29 percent of Americans had a positive image of Vance while 42 percent had a negative image.

Given the relentless smear campaign Democrats and the media deployed against Vance over the course of last year’s election cycle, including an effort to brand him as “weird” and racist, it seemed at the time that Vance could become a serious liability for the Republican ticket. Indeed, by September of last year, 49 percent of poll respondents told Atlas they had a negative image of Vance, while 36 percent said they had a positive image of him.

But then, something unusual happened – Vance hit the media circuit and began surging in popularity. By October, the percentage of Americans who said they had a positive and negative image of Vance had pulled even at 47 percent. In January, those numbers remained deadlocked at 49 percent and 49 percent. Now, he has a net-positive image rating.

After many Trump detractors confidently declared that the decision to put Vance on the ticket would sink Republicans’ chances last November, it became obvious in the final weeks of the race that Vance was one of the campaign’s greatest assets. Even now, as his recent smackdown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office shows, Vance has embraced the vice presidency in a way few others have to advance Trump’s America First agenda.

“I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media,” Vance said. “You should be thanking the president for trying to end this conflict.”

A few moments in particular over the past nine months stand out as crucial turning points when Vance won over the American people.

Perhaps the most notable was his performance in the vice presidential debate against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz last October. After the media had just spent weeks calling Vance “weird” and “extreme,” he came across as not only completely normal but also eminently more qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

“Tim, I think you got a tough job here because you’ve got to play whack-a-mole,” Vance said in one of his more memorable lines. “You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver rising take-home pay, which, of course, he did. You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver lower inflation, which, of course, he did. And then you’ve simultaneously got to defend Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries, and housing unaffordable for American citizens… We can do so much better.”

Not only could Vance snap back at Walz with facts on how Trump’s first term helped the American people, but he was also able to bridge Trump’s success back to a criticism of Kamala Harris.

Vance’s performance was so strong that even The New York Times halfheartedly conceded that Vance won the debate.

Vance’s appearance on several podcasts also utterly destroyed the “weird” narrative and confirmed for voters that the 40-year-old from a working-class background in Middletown, Ohio, was indeed a regular, down-to-earth guy. Vance appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience just days after Trump, along with stops on This Past Weekend with Theo Von and All-In Summit.

Since taking office, Vance has only continued to prove himself to the American people. His speech to European elites at the 61st Munich Security Conference last month, where he lectured them on the degradation of free speech and democracy across Europe, was a powerful defense of individual liberties that played well with everyday Americans of all political stripes – as reflected in the Atlas poll.

“Vance did not have to offer this challenge. He could have offered a series of bland bromides that neither offended nor interested anyone. But he did not,” David P. Deavel wrote for AMAC Newsline in a piece praising Vance’s speech. “Recognizing the historic bonds America has with Europe, he followed the order of charity in offering Europe’s leaders the kind of tough love a brother ought to give.”

Vance’s growing popularity is a stark reversal from the polling challenges that the country’s most recent vice president, Kamala Harris, faced during her tenure. According to the RealClearPolitics average, at the time of her inauguration, Harris had a close to 50 percent approval rating. But by July of that same year, the stats flipped, and the margin between those who liked and disliked the former vice president continued to grow.

By January 2024, 55 percent of respondents disapproved of the vice president, compared to just 36 percent who approved — mere months before her shocking step into the presidential race.

After four years of a vice president who acted as an anchor on an already historically unpopular president in Joe Biden, polling shows that Americans are grateful to have a capable, effective second-in-command.

Kamden Mulder is a senior at Hillsdale College pursuing a degree in American Studies and Journalism. You can follow her on X @kamdenmulder_.