Minnesota Governor Tim Walz saw a significant bump in polling after Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate in New York, surpassing Ohio Senator JD Vance in postdebate momentum.
The showdown saw the two candidates largely focus on differences, with Vance repeatedly hitting Vice President Kamala Harris on border security, while Walz lambasted former President Donald Trump on abortion rights. Newsweek has contacted the Vance and Walz campaigns for comment via email.
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According to the poll, the Minnesota governor saw a 23-point boost in his favorability ratings, going up from +14 to +37. Meanwhile, Vance saw a 19-point boost in his favorability ratings, going up from -22 to -3.
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You know, it was very different than I expected. There were quite a number of times when one of them said “Well I agree with most of that he just said.” Vance is pretty smooth, too. Much of what he said was total crap, but it wasn’t the Trump-style hateful vomit. It was the most cordial debate I’ve seen in a while, though there were some strong disagreements.
I just watched the debate. It’s true that Vance is better than Trump when it comes to rhetoric, but that’s not difficult. The sad thing is that many people seem to only care about how someone says something and not at all about what someone says.
I only partially agree. Yes, with the recent debates featuring Trump frothing at the mouth and saying completely insane and hateful stuff, if a debate doesn’t have that it’s worth connecting on. But people do care about content.
With this debate as an example, lots of people commented on the “sanewashing” that Vance was doing - trying to give plausible explanations for things Trump has said or done - but it’s just not as outrageous as what we’re used to. And the Republican base was largely happy with that he said, even when it was demonstratively false.
I think people care, but it’s twigs being added to a pile of logs.