[guest post by Dana]

With only 5 weeks until the election, the first and only vice-presidential debate will air live tonight at 9 p.m. ET.

So where do the candidates currently stand with voters?

Polls also indicate that Vance has some work to do after he made a rough first impression. In a recent NBC News national poll, 45% of registered voters said they viewed Vance negatively, compared with 32% who said they viewed him positively — making him one of the least-liked vice presidential candidates in the last 30 years. Walz, conversely, was viewed positively by 40% and negatively by 33%. And with his unsubstantiated claims about Haitian immigrants’ eating pets and his tendency to get ahead of Trump on policy, Vance already has drawn more scrutiny than any vice presidential candidate since another Republican, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, burst onto the scene in 2008.

While both candidates have their fans, Walz has misrepresented his time in China, while Vance has made grossly false accusations about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. And Vance continues to double-down on the accusations. And it’s important to note that a few years ago, Vance compared Trump to “America’s Hitler”:

Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick Ohio Sen. JD Vance was once a fervent critic of the former president. In private messages, he wondered ahead of Trump’s election whether he was “America’s Hitler” and in 2017 said the then-president was a “moral disaster.” In public, he agreed Trump was a “total fraud” who didn’t care about regular people and called him “reprehensible.”

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vance wrote in a message to a friend in 2016. “How’s that for discouraging?”

In 2016 and 2017, Vance, then best-known for penning the best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” said Trump was “cultural heroin” and “just another opioid” for Middle America. He told CNN ahead of the 2016 election that he was “definitely not” voting for Trump and he also contemplated voting for Hillary Clinton (he ultimately said he planned to vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin.)

“Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us,” he tweeted after the “Access Hollywood” tape was published in 2016.

Vance also liked tweets that said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” and harshly criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk),” Vance wrote in a deleted-tweet.

Given Donald Trump’s age (78) and obvious cognitive decline, it’s very possible that if Trump wins the election and his decline becomes severe, Vance would have to assume the presidency. Voters need to factor that in when voting on November 5. This is a man who was once stalwartly against Trump, with good reason, and then when his ear and ego were tickled by whomever, he reversed course and became a Trump bootlicker. While many members of Trump’s team see Vance’s “transition” as real, for the average voter it might be a different story.

–Dana