JD Vance, the junior Senator from Ohio, has been selected as Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee. A young face with a thin electoral record, Vance represents an effort by the Trump campaign to establish a legacy. Vance is a former critic of Trump turned staunch supporter, and holds heterodox stances within the party on economic issues.
Vance’s brand of blue-collar, pro-worker populism was intended to continue the positive trends Republicans have seen with white working-class voters under Trump. But how did it perform in his first election? Not particularly well.
Trump dominated rural Ohio
While Donald Trump and JD Vance both posted similar margins of victory in Ohio, Vance ran behind Trump in the vast majority of counties. This was most apparent in Ohio’s Appalachia region. Under Trump, Appalachian Ohio has seen perhaps the sharpest trend to the right of any region in the country. Contrary to Vance’s public image, he is not actually from Appalachia; his family lived in the Cincinnati area.
In Monroe County – which went from voting for Barack Obama by 10 points in 2008 to backing Trump by 54 points in 2020 – Trump outran Vance by a 10-point margin. In most of the region’s other counties, the margin was within the five to ten-point range. Trump also ran well ahead of Vance in the Toledo area in northwestern Ohio. Vance performed poorly in this region in 2022, losing the competitive 9th district.
Vance held up well in a few counties
There were a few areas Vance did run slightly ahead of Trump in – most of them urban. A resident of Cincinnati, Vance did manage to surpass Trump’s margin in Hamilton County. Once a Republican stronghold, the county has seen a sharp trend to the left under Trump – but it has been somewhat friendlier to down-ballot Republicans. In his re-election campaign, Governor Mike DeWine managed to carry it.
Vance also ran ahead of Trump in two urban counties. Vance performed slightly better than Trump in Montgomery County – home to Dayton, the state’s sixth-largest city. More impressively, he managed to outperform Trump in Mahoning County. Mahoning is home to Youngstown, and is one of the key examples of a white, working-class county that has trended Republican. The fact Vance did better than Trump here while running against Tim Ryan – the county’s incumbent, popular congressman – is actually fairly impressive.
