How many vacation days did JD Vance take as a senator in 2023?

1. What the record shows about Vance’s Senate attendance in 2023

Public roll-call and reporting snapshots in the provided sources describe missed votes and absences for Vance across his Senate term; GovTrack reports he missed 150 of 681 roll-call votes from Feb. 2023 to Jan. 2025 (22.0%) ^[3]. Truthout and other outlets assert he missed many votes, particularly after being named a vice-presidential candidate, but those pieces do not parse out “vacation days” in calendar-year 2023 ^{[4] [3]}.

2. What “vacation days” would require to be documented

A meaningful answer would require either Vance’s office releasing a calendar of personal time or authoritative tracking of constituency travel versus official business. The sources include his official Senate bio and Congress.gov activity, which record bills and committee work ^{[1] [2] [6]}, but those documents do not log personal leave or label absences as vacations ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Media narratives versus documented facts

Opinion and blog pieces in the dataset discuss Vance’s time away from Washington and frame it as frequent vacations — for example, post-2025 commentary and partisan outlets characterize extensive travel and retreats ^{[7] [8]}. Those accounts are opinionated and cover periods after 2023; they do not cite a contemporaneous official tally of “vacation days” in 2023 ^{[7] [8]}.

4. Attendance metrics that exist in the sources

GovTrack and related trackers provide hard attendance metrics for votes missed (e.g., 22% missed from Feb. 2023–Jan. 2025) and are the closest available quantitative measures in the dataset ^{[3] [9]}. These figures measure missed roll-call votes, not calendar days away for vacation; missed votes can result from travel, campaign activity, illness, or other duties and do not equate directly to “vacation days” ^{[3] [4]}.

5. Examples of Vance’s public engagements in 2023

The supplied materials reference specific 2023 appearances—State of the Union attendance in February and local events such as the Ohio State Fair in August—but they do not enumerate a vacation schedule or label those dates as personal leave ^{[10] [11]}. Coverage of later high-profile travel (e.g., Munich Security Conference trip) speaks to his travel choices but again does not convert those trips into a 2023 vacation-day count ^[5].

6. Limitations of the available sources

The dataset explicitly lacks any official calendar, ethics filing, or press release that lists “vacation days” taken by Vance in 2023. Available sources do not mention a specific number of vacation days for 2023; therefore any precise figure would be speculative without additional documentation ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

7. What would settle this question authoritatively

To answer definitively, one would need: (a) Vance’s official Senate or personal calendar for 2023; (b) a statement from his Senate office categorizing time away as vacation; or (c) a nonpartisan audit of official travel and leave. None of those appear among the provided documents ^{[1] [2]}.

8. Competing narratives and hidden agendas

Tracking “vacation days” for a politician is often wielded as a political attack or defense: critics highlight absences to suggest neglect of duty (as in some opinion pieces), while allies frame travel as official or parental/family time ^{[7] [8]}. The provided opinion pieces post-2024 emphasize frequent retreats, which may reflect agendas to build a political narrative rather than present a neutral accounting ^{[7] [8]}.

Bottom line: the supplied sources document Vance’s Senate start date and a substantial number of missed votes across 2023–2024, but they do not provide a documented count of “vacation days” he took in 2023; available sources do not mention that specific figure ^{[1] [3] [2]}.