Voters Hate Intellectuals

An underrated reason why Harris and Walz are more popular than Vance

This summer, I talked a lot about how I thought that from a purely political perspective, Trump made a poor choice in selecting JD Vance, and Kamala did well for herself by picking Tim Walz. This angered many rightoids, but here we are in late September after Americans have had a chance to become familiar with both candidates and the dust has settled, and we see that Tim Walz has a net favorability of 3.6, while Vance is at -10.7, a 14.3 percentage point difference. I was proved objectively right here, and I await their apologies.

More important than the approval ratings of the running mates are those of the two individuals at the top of the ticket. Here’s what we see as of me writing this. Kamala is exactly even, though that is 17-18 points better than early July, before Biden stepped aside. So it’s been a remarkable turnaround.

Trump, meanwhile, remains consistently unpopular, currently at -9.9.

Why are Trump and Vance so widely disliked? Why has Kamala seen her approval numbers go up so quickly since Biden stepped aside? And why has Tim Walz managed to be the only individual on either ticket who has been consistently viewed positively throughout the campaign?

Some answers to these questions are obvious. Trump is Trump, and Vance has said extremely unappealing things about women. Yet one thing that gets overlooked in comparing Vance, Kamala, and Walz is that the American public really doesn’t like intellectuals.