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JD Vance's favorability rating has had "serious positive movement" and is marginally positive for the first time in months, a new poll shows.
The Republican nominee for vice president has struggled in the polls since being picked as Donald Trump's running mate in July but performed well during his recent debate with his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz.
Vance's favorability is currently at 45.4 percent, against an unfavorability rating of 45, according to a new survey carried out by analytics firm Cygnal. That gives him a net favorability of 0.4 with a +/- 2.52 percent margin of error, which makes it statistically net even.
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The survey of 1,500 people between October 2 and 3 marks a significant change from Cygnal's previous polls.
Its early September poll had Vance's favorability rating at minus 8, with 48 percent saying he was unfavorable over 39 percent favorable.
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Cygnal's analysts linked this "serious positive movement" to Vance's vice presidential debate performance, noting that Walz's image has remained "generally consistent."
In the same October poll, Walz's favorability rating was 47 percent, compared to 42.5 percent unfavorability rating, a net of 4.5.
The Minnesota governor has consistently had a positive favorability rating, with Cygnal's previous polls showing him with a 45-percent favorability rating over 40-percent unfavorability in September and a 35-percent favorability rating over 31-percent unfavorability in August.
All three are within a range of 4 to 5 net favorability.
Vance's image has improved most notably among urban voters (+19 net favorability) and Independents (+26 net favorability), while Walz's image has dipped by -8 net favorability and -12 net favorability in each of these categories, respectively.
Newsweek reached out to Vance and the Kamala Harris-Walz campaign via email for comment.
Political scientist Christopher Cooper, from Western Carolina University, told Newsweek: "It would be hard for JD Vance's approval ratings to dip any further, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that a recent Cygnal poll has his numbers improving a bit. He was generally viewed as exceeding expectations in the vice presidential debate.
"In addition, there have not been any new revelations about him in the last few weeks and there's been a respite in leaks about his past statements. It's been a good few weeks for Vance, and this poll seems to reflect that."
But Cooper added: "We need to remember that this is just one poll—to understand whether this is a blip or a trend, we will need to wait a bit to see more polling roll in."
It comes after Nate Silver, a statistician and the founder of the polling aggregator 538, cast doubt on Harris' choice in Walz.
"I'm not into Tim Walz," Silver said in the October 9 episode of Risky Business, the podcast he hosts with Maria Konnikova. Silver said in a previous episode that he intends to vote for Harris in November.
Discussing the vice presidential debate on October 1, Silver said: "You don't want to make Trump and Vance seem sane," adding that Walz was "doing this whole nice guy thing."
He said Walz was "tactically not very good at going after JD Vance," whom he described as "an objectively better debater."
Update 9/10/24, 2:03 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Christopher Cooper.
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