US Vice President JD Vance of the Republican Party polled the highest in favourability in a recent survey released by Emerson College.
46 per cent of voters have a favourable opinion of him, 41 per cent have an unfavourable opinion of him, while the remaining 13 per cent are unsure, according to the poll. This gives him a net favourability rating of plus 5 points. By comparison, California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party scored 33 per cent in favourability and 44 per cent in unfavourability, for a net rating of negative 11 points.
The general consensus of pollsters and pundits is that JD Vance vs Gavin Newsom is the most likely match-up in the 2028 US presidential election—although, evidently, that event is still very far away.
Some may think that we, as a right-leaning website, exaggerated when we labelled Emerson an ‘accurate pollster’ in the headline, when in fact they are a right-leaning pollster. The reality is actually quite the opposite.
In both of their final two popular vote polls ahead of the 2024 presidential election—the latter of the two ended collecting data on 2 November—Emerson showed Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied at 49 per cent each. President Trump ended up winning the national popular vote by 1.48 percentage points, so they actually underestimated him.
Emerson was even more ‘generous’ with Democrats in the 2024 Congressional generic ballot polling. Their final numbers projected Democrats winning by 1 point, when in fact the GOP won by 2.7 points.
The Boston, Massachusetts-based college and polling firm also released new surveys about President Trump’s approval and the House generic ballot in this year’s midterm election. They measured the national support for President Trump’s performance in the White House at 43 per cent; while they polled the disapproval of his job as President is at 51 per cent. In the national vote for the 2026 House election, Democrats are leading Republicans by six points, still according to Emerson, 48–42.
As for the polling industry as a whole, President Trump’s approval stands at 42.6 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, while his disapproval is at 54.7 per cent in the same aggregate. The RCP average shows Democrats leading by 4.9 points in the generic ballot average. By comparison, at this point during President Trump’s first term, they led by 7.9 points; and ended up winning by 8.6 in the fall.
Emerson also measured the favourability of such figures as world’s richest man and the former head of the DOGE government efficiency agency Elon Musk (40–46 per cent, negative 6 favourability), Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro of the Democratic Party (33–27 per cent, plus 6 favourability), and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Democratic Party (32–44 per cent, negative 12 favourability).
As we wrote above, Vice President JD Vance scored the highest in favourability among all those included in the poll.
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