Who’s the More Liked VP, Vance or Walz?

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris selected similar vice-presidential picks – both Midwestern veterans from humble backgrounds. Their choices suggest that Harris and Trump view the Rust Belt swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania as crucial. However, polls indicate that both candidates have problems on certain issues.

An Economist/YouGov poll conducted Aug. 11-13 among 1,407 respondents measured the favorability of both candidates. According to the poll, Walz had a net positive favorability, with 40% holding a favorable opinion and 39% holding an unfavorable opinion. In contrast, Vance was net unfavorable, with only 36% viewing him favorably and 47% unfavorably. Vance is also perceived as somewhat more extreme than Walz, with 36% describing Vance as “very conservative,” while 31% see Walz as “very liberal.”

Vance's reputation for extremism is partly due to some recently reemerged statements that have been labeled “offensive.” A clip of Vance on Tucker Carlson’s show has also reappeared, where he said, “We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats via our corporate oligarchs by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”

In response to the clip, the official Kamala HQ X account posted a video of Alyssa Farah, former Trump aide and now co-host of "The View," calling Vance’s words offensive to women her age: “I’m hearing from so many girlfriends, lifelong Republicans, that are so offended by it. If you’re a woman about my age, in your mid-thirties, the most common thing my friends are dealing with is infertility, miscarriages, struggling to get pregnant … How dare you denigrate them and say they are not as valuable?” According to the Economist poll, Vance’s favorability among women was slightly lower than among men, at 32%.

Since Walz was picked as VP last week, he has also faced scrutiny. The main line of attack has been accusations of “stolen valor,” alleging he lied about his role in the military. Critics cite a 2018 speech where Walz said, “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” despite never being deployed to a combat zone during his time in the Army National Guard. In response to the accusations, Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt stated that Walz didn’t lie but misspoke: “In making the case for why weapons of war should never be on our streets or in our classrooms, the governor misspoke.”

These impressions of “stolen valor” have resonated, with 18% of respondents in the Economist poll saying Walz “did not serve honorably” during his military service, compared to 7% who said the same about Vance. Most of the negative sentiment was among Republicans, with only 2% of Democrats and 14% of independents agreeing that Walz did not serve honorably.