In the debate between vice presidential nominees, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) held late Tuesday, the latter was slightly ahead, flash polls by CNN showed.
What Happened: Fifty-one percent of the registered voters who watched the debate picked Vance as the winner of Tuesday’s debate, the CNN instant poll by SSRS showed. A more modest 49% opined that Walz won the face-off.
The poll was conducted by text message with 574 registered voters who said they watched the debate, and the results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.
Fifty-nine percent of debate watchers said they had a favorable view of the Democratic vice presidential candidate Walz and only 22% viewed him unfavorably, giving him a net positive favorability rating of 37 points. Ahead of the debate, he had a net positive positive favorability rating of 14 points (46% favorable and 32% unfavorable).
Meanwhile, debate watchers had a net negative favorability rating of three points for Republican nominee Vance (41% favorable and 44% unfavorable). This marked a solid improvement from the net negative 22-point favorability rating for him ahead of the debate (30% favorable, 52% unfavorable).
The pollster noted that debate watchers contacted were three points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, which is about five points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally. The composition is different from the audience of the two presidential debates this year, with both GOP-leaning than the potential American electorate overall.
When asked whether either of the candidates was qualified to serve as president if needed, 65% said Walz would fit the bill and 58% said Vance had credentials to serve as president. The proportion who felt the same about both were 62% and 50%, respectively, ahead of the debate.
Why It’s Important: The presidential election is just a little over a month away, and ever since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, she has pushed slightly ahead in the race. Given a second debate between Trump and Harris is unlikely, the outcome of the vice presidential debate was keenly watched.
A post by X handle @EndTribalism summed up the debate as “America won.” “The amount of times the words ‘I agree with just about all of that but..’ were said tonight was beautiful,” the post said. “The main takeaway is that most Americans agree on what the issues of America are, we just slightly disagree on how to solve them.”
Following the debate, Trump applauded his running mate on the Truth Social platform. “JD crushed it! Walz was a Low IQ Disaster – Very much like Kamala. Our Country would never be able to recover from an Administration of these two,” the former president said. “Can you imagine them representing us with sharp, fierce Foreign Leaders? I can’t!”
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