If conventional wisdom is to be believed, then Tuesday night’s debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz will have little bearing on the result of the US election. Vice-presidential candidates have had a negligible impact in the past; voters, understandably, are focused on the top of the ticket and pay little heed to running mates. So the encounter in New York between the Ohio senator and the Minnesota governor received much less attention than last month’s clash between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Just as Harris was widely agreed to have won that debate, so Vance is generally deemed to have bested Walz. An accomplished speaker, he succeded in projecting a more amiable persona than the pugnacious and divisive one whose popularity ratings have plumbed new lows for a vice-presidential candidate since Trump selected him in July. Walz struggled for much of the 90-minute-long broadcast but did achieve some success towards its close, particularly when Vance refused to answer when asked whether Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.
History suggests that none of this will matter very much when votes are cast. But history is not necessarily the best guide to this unpredictable election, where the old rules have already been upturned.
For decades, the place of live televised debates in the presidential election calendar was fixed. The candidates would meet two or three times in the weeks leading up to the election. But this year, the first debate was held in June, and led directly to the replacement of one party’s nominee. The sole encounter between Trump and Harris took place two months before election day. In the ensuing vacuum, and with polls showing a virtual dead heat in swing states, even the most marginal effect could be crucial.
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What should worry the Harris camp is the challenge of maintaining momentum over these final five weeks without any large media set-pieces to keep her in the public mind. She needs these more than Trump, who voters, for good or ill, hardly need reminding about.
