The vice-presidential debate, hosted by CBS on Tuesday, Oct. 1, was an homage to the civil debate structure we’ve seen in the past. With the increasing divide between the Democratic and Republican Parties, JD Vance and Tim Walz offered refreshing discourse between two incredibly polarized parties.
But who actually won the debate?
First, you have to answer the question of what it actually means to “win” this debate. For these VP candidates, it meant successfully moving the dial of swing voters to their candidate. Swing voters from Michigan, Wisconsin, the western part of Pennsylvania (which has more midwestern values), and North Carolina and Georgia (which have more conservative bends with some midwestern flair) were the clear audience.
This begs the question: who are these midwestern people the VP candidates are trying to appeal to?
The intended audience is mostly nice, humble, community-focused, Christian, and blue-collar people — they’re not the type of people who would like to see candidates behaving abrasively. Instead, Vance and Walz knew they needed to show a high level of civility and how they related to these swing voters — they both talked about growing up in Ohio and Nebraska, respectively, and how both of them were in the military. This contrasts with how Harris and Trump presented themselves. Trump is a NYC real estate mogul. Harris is an attorney whose dad worked at Stanford and whose mom was a scientist.
So, in terms of who won swing voters — it’s hard to determine.
Polls taken by CBS showed that 41% of people who took the poll thought Walz won while 42% thought that Vance won (17% thought that it ended in a tie). These numbers are so close that it’s hard to tell which candidate is actually in the lead (usually there’s a small margin of error on these polls and with a 1% difference between the two it becomes a very nuanced difference).
If you can’t determine who won the debate based on who swing voters, then how else can we determine the winner?
Quite simply, whichever candidate helped defend the case of their running mate. In this case, Vance clearly won the first half of the debate. He was able to balance Trump’s rhetoric with his own congenial, humble views and answered questions more directly than Walz. Walz didn’t talk a lot about Harris’ opinions and policies on subjects like healthcare and inflation. He focused on his own policies and kept bringing up how he’s done things in Minnesota (in terms of healthcare, gun laws, abortion, etc.). However, he’s not the one who is going to be driving policy: Harris is. Vance clearly stuck to defending and spinning Trump’s controversial opinions. You may not like it, but what Vance did was highly effective.
There’s been a begrudging agreement among liberal groups that Vance did in fact perform well — Swarthmore being one of those groups. After the debate, students were found mulling in shock and worry about Vance’s civil persona. Some students expressed concern about how this performance would make an already close race even closer. Others saw it as a refreshing display of discourse that commemorated historical civility between both parties. While it doesn’t seem like there was a clear winner of the debate, both parties were left to think their prospective candidate won.
However, there was a winner: the American people. The respect Vance and Walz showed for each other gave people hope that the acts of civility and compromise are not lost between these two polarized parties. This divide is the biggest threat to our democracy. So, reconciling differences and finding common ground are central to the survival of the United States. The VP debate was a step forward for the American people’s future. A future that’s not plagued by disdain and hatred for others, but instead welcomes integrity, understanding, and respect.
