When Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota took the debate stage Tuesday night, a significant share of Americans had not yet formed opinions about either vice-presidential candidate, according to recent polls.
Many voters will now have a better sense of who they are, other than just the running mates of former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. But history suggests the debate is unlikely to sway voting choices.
Since vice-presidential debates have typically been followed by presidential debates a few days later, it has been hard to measure their impact on past elections. Over the last six presidential election cycles, there was only one time when national polls moved more than one percentage point after a vice-presidential debate and before the next presidential debate, according to an analysis by 538.
That was in 2000, and even then, it was only a 1.2-point change (toward George W. Bush, after his running mate, Dick Cheney, sparred with Joseph I. Lieberman, Al Gore’s vice-presidential pick). More recently, snap polls after the vice-presidential debate in 2020 between Harris and Mike Pence found that respondents’ likelihood of voting for either presidential candidate was identical before and after the debate.
Research has also shown that even outside of debates, vice-presidential candidates themselves have little effect on voters’ choices.
What these debates can do is give voters more familiarity with the running mates — for better or worse.
Polls before Tuesday’s debate showed that about one in five Americans had no opinion of Mr. Vance, and a quarter of Americans had no opinion of Mr. Walz. (Among respondents who did have an opinion, Mr. Vance was viewed more negatively than positively, while Mr. Walz was viewed slightly more positively than negatively.)
In the most recent New York Times/Siena College polls of Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, 10 percent of likely voters had not heard of or had no opinion of Mr. Vance, and 16 percent said the same of Mr. Walz. By contrast, in the same poll, 98 percent of likely voters had an opinion of Ms. Harris and 99 percent of Mr. Trump.
Early polling data suggests the debate may have helped boost the images of Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance. While so-called snap polls aren’t as reliable as surveys that are fielded for longer periods (giving pollsters more opportunity to contact a representative sample of voters), they can provide a rough sense of the direction of public opinion.
Both vice-presidential candidates won over some voters during the 90-minute debate, according to a poll from CBS News, which hosted the event. Before the debate, 52 percent of the poll’s respondents had a favorable view of Mr. Walz, and 60 percent did afterward. And 49 percent had a favorable view of Mr. Vance after the debate, an increase of nine percentage points over the pre-debate poll.
A poll from CNN showed similar improvements in voters’ opinions of both candidates.
We’ll have to wait for further polling to get a better picture of the debate’s impact on the race, if any. But the running mates can at least be happy about bettering their name recognition.
The post The V.P. Debate Might Boost Vance and Walz, but It Probably Won’t Shift the Polls appeared first on New York Times.
