2020 Vice Presidential Debate Recap

On Wednesday, Oct. 8, the first and only Vice Presidential Debate took place between Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence.  After the Presidential Debate last week, American citizens were anxious to see if the Vice-Presidential candidates would act more professionally than their Presidential counterparts.

After viewing both debates, it’s almost indisputable that the vice presidential debate was more civil than the presidential one, if only slightly. Both candidates were better about not interrupting their competition, but they also had an issue with both canidates not following the time limits set by the debate moderator, Susan Page of USA Today.

Vice President Pence is famous for his ability to deny anything negative about Donald Trump thrown his way, which is the strategy he used at the 2016 debate, as well as the one he employed for this election. 

Senator Harris, on the other hand, used to work as a prosecutor before getting into politics and was well-known for her aggressive debate strategy during the democratic primaries, so it was heavily speculated that she would debate very aggressively against Pence. This turned out not to be the case, however, as both Senator Harris and Vice President Pence remained fairly calm throughout the debate.

According to FiveThirtyEight, a very reputable polling source, the vice presidential debate poll was much closer than the presidential one (Where Biden won by over 20%). FiveThirtyEight asked respondents how each candidate performed, and the results showed 59.5% of voters agreeing that Vice President Pence had a good performance and 69.3% stating that Senator Harris’s performance was good.

There is a chance that this debate will be the last for the 2020 presidential election, as President Donald Trump pulled out of next week’s debate after it was switched to an online format due to his COVID-19 diagnosis. More details to follow as the story develops.