What early polls say about who won the VP debate

On Tuesday night, Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz squared off in the 2024 vice presidential debate — which will also likely be the final debate of the entire presidential election. Given that, perhaps both parties were hoping even more than usual for their candidate to score a clear win — something that could give their side some momentum heading into the final five weeks of the campaign.

Well, it looks like that didn't happen — polls conducted in the immediate aftermath of the debate found that debate watchers were split on which candidate won.

According to an average of late-Tuesday polls from CNN/SSRS, YouGov/CBS News, Focaldata/Politico and J.L. Partners/DailyMail.com, 48 percent of debate watchers thought that Vance was the winner or turned in the best performance, while 46 percent thought that Walz was the winner or did the best.

This is maybe an unsurprising result after a debate in which both candidates had both strong and weak moments — and neither candidate clearly bombed the way, say, President Joe Biden did in the June presidential debate. As a result, it looks like the vast majority of debate watchers simply retreated to their partisan camps. According to CNN/SSRS, 90 percent of Trump supporters who watched the debate thought Vance won, while 82 percent of Harris supporters who watched thought Walz did.

It's worth noting, though, that polls of debate watchers aren't necessarily representative of the full electorate; indeed, both CNN and CBS News noted that their samples of debate watchers skewed Democratic. (It's possible that more Democrats watched the debate because they're more excited about their VP nominee than Republicans are.) So as word (or video clips) of the debate start to reach people who didn't watch, Vance may come out looking better.

Another possible reason there wasn't a clear winner is that both candidates generally came across well. According to the YouGov/CBS News poll, 88 percent of debate watchers felt the tone of the event was "generally positive." Strong majorities in the poll also reported that both Vance (65 percent) and Walz (74 percent) came across as "reasonable" rather than "extreme."

As a result, viewers came away from the debate with higher opinions of both candidates. On average between the CNN/SSRS and YouGov/CBS News polls, Vance's net favorability rating (the share of respondents who said they viewed him favorably minus the share who said they viewed him unfavorably) went from -18 percentage points before the debate to just -1 point after it. And Walz's net favorability rating increased from +13 points before the debate to +31 points after it.

Now, I'd recommend taking those numbers seriously but not literally — that is, Vance's and Walz's net favorability ratings may very well increase as a result of the debate, but probably not by those specific numbers. As mentioned earlier, both CNN and CBS News's samples skewed Democratic, so both polls probably overestimate Walz's popularity and underestimate Vance's. (By comparison, Vance's net favorability rating going into the debate, according to 538's average, was only -11 points, while Walz's was only +4 points.)

And don't expect either candidate's net favorability rating to jump by almost 20 points. Remember, these polls were of debate watchers only, a small segment of the population. People who didn't watch the debate may not be inclined to reevaluate their views of the candidates nearly as much. In my preview of the debate, I found that recent non-incumbent vice presidential candidates saw their average net favorability ratings shift by an average of 2 points in the two weeks following their debates.

If that pattern holds, both Vance and Walz may get slightly more popular over the next couple weeks, but not enough to drastically change how they are viewed.

And overall, it's very unlikely that the VP debate will affect who leads the presidential race. Vice presidential debates already weren't very important: My preview also found that the last time the national polls moved more than 1 point in the immediate wake of a VP debate was 2000. And with early polls indicating no clear winner in Tuesday's clash, it's even less likely that this year's debate will make a difference. That's backed up by the CNN poll, which found that a mere 1 percent of debate watchers said the event changed their vote.