J.D. Vance Is the Choice of an Emboldened Trump

Julia Azari: “Vance won his Senate election in 2022, but notably ran well behind Republican candidate for governor, Mike DeWine. This casts some doubt on whether Vance is a great campaigner or a particularly strong candidate…”

“The main takeaway is probably that while there are candidates who outrun their parties in competitive states even in this nationalized environment (for example, Marco Rubio won over 57% of the vote in 2022 compared to Trump’s 51% in Florida in 2020), Vance is not one of them.”

“All of this is to say that Vance was the choice of an emboldened Trump, bolstered by Biden’s poor debate performance and the outpouring attention after an assassination attempt on July 13. Trump appears confident that America loves him, and that his running mate doesn’t need to overcome any deficits in that area. It’s too early to draw serious inferences about whether that’s true now or will be in November, but we have plenty of past evidence about whether Trump and Trumpism are a safe national electoral bet.”