Polls following the debate between the Democratic and Republican vice presidential candidates in the United States showed that viewers were divided on who won the debate: J.D. Vance or Tim Walz?
It is possible that this debate will be the last before the presidential elections scheduled for next November, as there will not be another between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump as expected.
Given this, both parties may have hoped that their vice presidential candidates would achieve a clear victory, which could give one candidate or another a boost of momentum five weeks before the end of the election campaigns.
According to a network report ABC News“, “It seems that did not happen”, that is, it did not appear that either of them won outright in the end.
Polls taken immediately after the debate showed that viewers were divided on the winning candidate.
According to an average of polls conducted Tuesday by CNN/SSRS, YouGov/CBS News, Focaldata/Politico, and J.L. Partners/DailyMail, 48 percent of viewers thought Vance was the winner or did better, while 46 percent thought Walls was the winner or did better.
Perhaps this result was not surprising after a debate that witnessed strong and weak moments for both candidates, and neither of them collapsed clearly as happened to President Joe Biden in the presidential debate in June, according to the same report.
As a result, the majority of viewers seem to have retreated into their partisan camps. According to a CNN/SSRS poll, 90 percent of Trump supporters who watched the debate thought Vance was the winner, while 82 percent of Harris supporters saw Walz as the winner.
Vance is the vice presidential nominee alongside Trump, while Waz is the nominee for the same position with Harris.
It is worth noting that viewer polls are not necessarily representative of the entire electorate.
In fact, both CNN and CBS News indicated that their samples of viewers leaned Democratic.
According to a YouGov/CBS News poll, 88 percent of viewers felt the tone of the event was “generally positive.”
A strong majority in the poll said that both Vance (65 percent) and Walz (74 percent) seemed more “reasonable” than “extreme.”
As a result, viewers came away from the debate with better opinions of both candidates.
Averaged between the CNN/SSRS and YouGov/CBS News polls, Vance’s net approval rating (the difference between the percentage of those with a favorable opinion and the percentage of those with an unfavorable opinion) rose from -18 points before the debate to -1 point after.
Walz’s net approval rating increased from +13 points before the debate to +31 points afterward.
The American channel’s report recommended taking these numbers seriously, but not literally, as the net approval rating for Vance and Walls may increase as a result of the debate, but perhaps not with these specific numbers.
Note that these polls are for debate viewers only, who are a small portion of the population. People who did not watch the debate may not be as inclined to reevaluate their opinions about the candidates.
