Vance and Walz face off in civil and policy-focused VP debate

Our live coverage of the 2024 campaign has moved here.

Walz speaks during a debate with Vance on Tuesday.

The vice presidential debate between Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was something that’s become increasingly rare in modern American politics: Normal.

In an event that is unlikely to change the trajectory of the presidential race, the two VP candidates were cordial with each other, training their attacks instead on the tops of the opposing tickets and focusing largely on policy differences. Vance repeatedly hit Vice President Kamala Harris on border security, while Walz lambasted former President Donald Trump on abortion rights.

Here are some key takeaways from Tuesday’s debate:

Springfield pet-eating claims feature in immigration clash: During a debate over immigration and border security, Walz invoked Vance’s false claims about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of residents in Springfield, Ohio.

“There’s consequences for this,” Walz said, pointing out that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, dispatched state troopers to Springfield to ensure the safety of children after a series of bomb threats. Vance shot back, “The people I care most about in Springfield are the American citizens.”

What Vance didn’t say: The 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian migrants in Springfield are in the United States legally. But Walz didn’t fact-check Vance on that matter. And when he didn’t, CBS moderator Margaret Brennan explained those immigrants’ legal status.

Vance dodges on January 6: The clearest divide of the night came when Walz put Vance on the spot during a discussion of the January 6, 2021, insurrection and Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked Vance, attempting to force the Ohio senator to acknowledge a reality that Trump himself won’t.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” was how Vance began his response.

“That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz shot back.

Midwestern nice … up to a point: In many ways, this vice presidential debate reflected the way typical Americans argue about contentious issues. There was no name-calling, few canned zingers and a clear directive for both Vance and Walz not to get personal – unless they were aggressively agreeing that the issues were, in fact, issues. The housing crisis, they agreed, was a crisis. Gun violence, both said, needed to be reduced.

Instead of jousting among themselves, Vance and Walz behaved agreeably in the service of trying to depict the respective presidential candidates as uniquely divisive or misguided.

Read more takeaways from the debate and watch one of the moments below.

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s vice presidential see Democratic nominee Tim Walz as more in touch with them and their vision for America, according to a CNN instant poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS.

They give Republican nominee JD Vance a slight edge in doing a better job defending his running mate. And practically none see the event as a reason to change which ticket they’re supporting for the presidency.

Debate watchers say, 48% to 35%, that Walz is more in touch with the needs and problems of people like them than Vance is. The share who say that both vice presidential hopefuls are in touch with their problems is twice as large as the share who say that neither is, 12% to 6%.

Following Tuesday night’s debate, viewers say, 48% to 39%, that Walz, rather than Vance, more closely shares their vision for America, with 8% saying that both candidates share their vision, and 5% saying that neither do. They say, 37% to 33%, that Vance, rather than Walz, did the better job defending his running mate, with 27% saying that each candidate did an equally good job, and 3% that neither did.

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public. Debate watchers in the poll were 3 points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, making for an audience that’s about 5 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally. That’s a difference from the audience for the two presidential debates this year, both of which were slightly more GOP-leaning than the potential American electorate overall.

A negligible 1% of voters who tuned into the debate said it had changed their minds about whom to vote for.

The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 574 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Tuesday, and the poll findings are representative of the views of debate watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected via a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

Sen. JD Vance on Tuesday claimed that part of the United States’ issue with gun violence stems from Mexican drug cartels smuggling guns into the country from across the border.

“Thanks to Kamala Harris’ open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel … then the amount of illegal guns in our country is higher today than it was three and a half years ago,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim is misleading. There is a proliferation of illegal guns crossing the US-Mexico border – but they are going from the US into Mexico, not the other way around.

Mexico has been plagued by gun violence for years — and the Mexican government has pinned bloodshed on the free flow of guns over the border from the United States.

An estimated 200,000 guns are trafficked from the US into Mexico each year, the Mexican Foreign Ministry has said — an average of nearly 550 per day. In 2021, Mexico sued several US-based gun manufacturers claiming they “design, market, distribute and sell guns in ways” that arm cartels in Mexico.

Mexico strictly controls the sale of firearms. There is only one gun store in Mexico, and it’s controlled by the army. That makes the large-scale smuggling of guns from Mexico into the US, where laws are laxer and gun stores plentiful, unfeasible.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz visit Justino's Pizzeria after his debate with Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance on Tuesday in New York.

After the debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, were spotted grabbing a slice of pizza from a New York pizza shop.

When asked what he believes was his strongest moment tonight, Walz said, “I think it was a good debate.”

He was also asked by a reporter to speak more about his religion. “We’re Lutherans, we don’t talk about it,” he quipped quietly to Gwen.

Walz did not respond to questions on his travel to Hong Kong during Tiananmen Square protests. He also did not respond to a question about what he meant when he said he “became friends with school shooters” during the debate.

Before the debate, a reporter from Crain’s New York spotted Walz jogging through Central Park and noted the governor was “recognized by seemingly no one.”

This post has been updated with more comments from Walz.

Sen. JD Vance argued that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies have helped American workers, specifically citing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Facts first: Vance’s comments need context. While the 2017 law reduced taxes for most people, the rich benefited far more than others, according to a 2018 analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group. 

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act contained an array of individual income tax reductions – including lowering many individual income tax rates, notably the top rate, from 39.6% to 37% for the highest earners.

More than 60% of the benefits were expected to go to those whose incomes are in the top 20%, and they were projected to get the largest bump in after-tax income, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Only a little more than a quarter of those in the lowest-income households would see their taxes reduced, and they were projected to have a very small bump in after-tax income.

Most middle-income taxpayers were expected to see a tax cut, but their boost in after-tax income was projected to be smaller than those at the top of the income ladder.

About two dozen people gathered to watch the debate at a bar blocks away from the Capitol in Washington, where the pro-Harris Win With Black Men PAC hosted a viewing party.

While none of the attendees changed their position on who they will support in the election as a result of the face off, some did acknowledge JD Vance showed up tonight and was especially strong.

They said they felt he really didn’t have a choice given how dominant Vice President Harris was over former President Donald Trump a few weeks ago.

Kevin Hooks, an attendee, said Vance “was strong because the bar was so low.”

Huda Mumin said Walz “wears his heart on his sleeve and kind of speaks from a place of wholesomeness.”

“So we didn’t see a lot of the back and forth, getting into the dirt,” said Mumin, who runs the Chefs for Kamala group.

She said that she knows being overly confrontational wasn’t Walz’ style, but perhaps would’ve appreciated him being more forceful. “I think it’s really interesting that Walz kind of came alive towards the end of the debate. He felt more comfortable,” she said.

Sen. JD Vance said in Tuesday’s vice presidential debate that former President Donald Trump could have “destroyed” the Affordable Care Act during his first term, but instead he “saved” it.

“He saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim is misleading. During Trump’s administration, he and his officials took many steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act after failing to repeal it, though they did continue to operate the Obamacare exchanges. Also, during his term, the Department of Health and Human Services approved several state waiver requests that resulted in lower premiums for Affordable Care Act plans.

As president, Trump initially tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act but failed because congressional Republicans could not amass enough votes to kill the law in 2017.

Then, Trump put in place many measures aimed at undermining the law, which led to a decline in enrollment. He cut the open enrollment period in half, to only six weeks. He also slashed funding for advertising and for navigators, who are critical to helping people sign up. At the same time, he increased the visibility of insurance agents who can also sell non-Obamacare plans.

Trump signed an executive order in October 2017 making it easier for Americans to access alternative policies that have lower premiums than Affordable Care Act plans – but in exchange for fewer protections and benefits. And he ended subsidy payments to health insurers to reduce eligible enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs.

Plus, his administration refused to defend several central provisions of the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican-led states, arguing that key parts of Obamacare should be invalidated. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the challenge and left the law in place.

Enrollment declined until the final year of his term, which was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the Trump administration did approve several states’ waiver applications to implement reinsurance programs in their Affordable Care Act exchanges. This generally lowered Obamacare premiums by providing funding for insurers that enrolled many high-cost patients.

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance left with more positive views of both, according to a CNN instant poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, with both men viewed by a majority of the audience as qualified to assume the vice presidency if needed.

Following the debate, 59% of debate watchers said they had a favorable view of Walz, with just 22% viewing him unfavorably – an improvement from his already positive numbers among the same voters pre-debate (46% favorable, 32% unfavorable).

Debate watchers came away with roughly net neutral views of Vance following the debate: 41% rated him favorably and 44% unfavorably. That’s also an improvement from their image of Vance pre-debate, when his ratings among this group were deeply underwater (30% favorable, 52% unfavorable).

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public. Debate watchers in the poll were 3 points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, making for an audience that’s about 5 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally. That’s a difference from the audience for the two presidential debates this year, both of which were slightly more GOP-leaning than the potential American electorate overall.

A 65% majority of debate watchers now say Walz is qualified to serve as vice president if necessary, with 58% saying the same of Vance. Before the debate, 62% thought Walz was qualified to assume the vice presidency if needed, and 50% that Vance was qualified to do so.

In a CNN poll of all Americans taken prior to the debate, views of Walz were narrowly above water, with 36% of voters viewing him favorably, 32% unfavorably and 33% saying they hadn’t heard of him or had no opinion of him. By contrast, views of Vance tilted negative, with 30% of registered voters rating him favorably, 42% unfavorably and 27% offering no opinion.

The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 574 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Tuesday, and the poll findings are representative of the views of debate watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected via a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was “not looking to” participate in another debate after the Harris campaign reiterated its challenge for Trump to join Vice President Kamala Harris in accepting an invitation from CNN to debate on October 23.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of Harris’ campaign, said: “Vice President Harris believes that the American people deserve to see her and Trump on the debate stage one more time. She will be in Atlanta on October 23 – Donald Trump should step up and face the voters.”

Trump had previously said he would not participate in another debate with Harris, as he argues its too late for another debate because people have already started voting.

Vance speaks to Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel in the spin room after a CBS News vice presidential debate on Tuesday in New York.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance said Tuesday night that he had been nervous on the debate stage and that he didn’t notice whether his opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had felt the same way, instead pivoting to the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s ability to defend his running mate’s policy record.

Responding on Fox News to Sean Hannity’s assertion that Walz seemed “very nervous,” Vance responded, saying “I didn’t notice,” adding that his adrenaline was “going so much I was nervous.”

He later expanded: “I’m not surprised that Tim couldn’t defend that record. Who could? If you put me on that debate stage, I mean, you clearly think I did a good job, I hope that I did a good job, but if you asked me to defend Kamala Harris’s record, I’d melt into a puddle, because there is no defending what she’s done the last three and a half years.”

Vance said he “just wanted to talk about issues,” adding, “it’s an unbelievable opportunity for a person who wants to be the next vice president, and you should just make it as much as possible about substance.”

Vance said making the case for Trump’s leadership is an “easier argument to make tonight,” because of the “incredible tragedy” unfolding in Israel, which “could become a broader regional conflict.”

Some undecided voters in battleground Michigan said the vice presidential debate on Tuesday was refreshing to see.

The seven voters on the CNN focus group panel in Grand Rapids shared their reactions in real-time through a tracking device where they could gauge if they felt favorably or not about moments happening on stage. The voters told CNN’s Phil Mattingly that overall they viewed both candidates in a better light after the debate, regardless of how they felt at the beginning.

Two voters remarked on the tone of the policy-focused debate. She said she felt like she hadn’t “seen a debate like this in a very long time.” The voter said she felt like Republican JD Vance and Democratic rival Gov. Tim Walz “supported each other” and were kind.

Another voter said they were “not attacking each other personally but more of the policies and then what they stand for.”

Some of the moments that stood out favorably to the voters were Vance’s answer that he wants the Republican Party “to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.”

“Just saying that they should have a choice, was a complete different response than I was expecting,” one voter said, adding that it sounded “very progressive.” She said hearing that response from a Republican vice presidential candidate was encouraging.

One of those voters said the debate helped him make up his mind about who to vote for in November. The moment that pushed him to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris was when the candidates were talking about the January 6 insurrection.

The moderators were asking Vance if he would certify the election if Donald Trump lost in November.

“JD Vance didn’t really give us a definitive answer and I am disappointed in that fact. And I don’t think that I can trust someone, you know, with my vote, if they’re not going to respect it,” the voter said.

Sen. JD Vance claimed at Tuesday’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered 1.5% inflation for Americans.

“Because Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered the highest take-home pay in a generation in this country, 1.5% inflation, and to boot, peace and security all over the world,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim needs context. The annual inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, was indeed 1.5% in May 2019; however, the average inflation rate was north of 2.1% from January 2017 through February 2020, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and its quick and deep economic recession in the US, inflation slowed drastically as Americans sheltered at home and reduced spending on in-person services.

Including the pandemic-distorted pricing environment, the CPI averaged 1.9% from 2017 through 2020, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

For comparison purposes, during the Biden-Harris administration, the CPI averaged an annual rate of 5.2%

Inflation’s rapid ascent – which began in early 2021 and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 before moderating to 2.5% in August 2024 – was the result of a confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic, such as snarled supply chains, and geopolitical fallout (specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the Trump and Biden administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s debate between vice presidential nominees Tim Walz and JD Vance were closely split on which candidate turned in a better performance, according to a CNN instant poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, with 51% saying that Vance did the better job, and 49% picking Walz.

Prior to the debate, the same voters gave Walz an edge as the candidate they expected to perform more strongly, 54% to 45%.

The poll’s results reflect opinions of the debate only among those voters who tuned in and aren’t representative of the views of the full voting public. Debate watchers in the poll were 3 points likelier to be Democratic-aligned than Republican-aligned, making for an audience that’s about 5 percentage points more Democratic-leaning than all registered voters nationally. That’s a difference from the audience for the two presidential debates this year, both of which were slightly more GOP-leaning than the potential American electorate overall.

Viewers’ closely divided opinions about the outcome of Tuesday’s debate also stand in sharp contrast to the more decisive audience reaction following this year’s top-of-the-ticket debates. In June, two-thirds of debate watchers thought that former President Donald Trump outperformed President Joe Biden, while a 63% majority who tuned in to the September debate between Trump and Kamala Harris said that the vice president did the better job.

In the vice presidential debate four years ago, viewers saw Harris as the clear winner over then-Vice President Mike Pence, backing her debate performance by a 21-point margin. Debate watchers were more divided in 2016 (when they favored Pence over Democrat Tim Kaine by a 6-point margin) and 2012 (when they favored Republican Paul Ryan over Biden by a 4-point margin). In 2008, debate watchers gave Biden the win over Republican Sarah Palin by a 15-point margin.

The CNN poll was conducted by text message with 574 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Tuesday, and the poll findings are representative of the views of debate watchers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected via a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

Former President Donald Trump watched tonight’s debate from his plane on the way to Houston, Texas, posting his criticism of Tim Walz on social media.

Trump privately praised Vance to those around him, as his advisers celebrated the Republican vice presidential nominee’s performance, a source close to Trump said.

It was a far different tone than the aftermath of Trump’s debate in Philadelphia against Vice President Kamala Harris, in which his advisers cringed during various parts of his debate and privately expressed concern that it could hurt him in November.

The general consensus among Trump’s orbit is not this debate is not going to move the needle; however, they are pleased with Vance’s performance and the fact that they don’t feel like they will be playing clean up tomorrow.

Former President Donald Trump has posted several times on social media about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz misspeaking during the debate when the governor said he had “become friends with school shooters.”

A Harris-Walz campaign official told CNN that the governor was referring to meeting with the families of school shooting victims when he said he’d “become friends with school shooters.” The campaign noted Walz had been speaking about the families of victims in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting prior to making the remark.

During the debate, Walz was asked about why he changed his position in support on assault weapons and he credited it to meeting the parents of children who were killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school.

Sen. JD Vance claimed Tuesday that migrants who apply for legal status through a Customs and Border Protection app can have it granted “at the wave of a… wand.”

“There’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand,” he said.

Facts First: This claim is false. CBP One allows users to schedule appointments to claim asylum with border authorities, but that does not mean that their request will be granted. The app is not a means to make an asylum application. It allows applicants to enter their information through the app rather than going directly to a port of entry.

The app was launched in October 2020, during the Trump administration, so people could access Customs and Border Protection services on their mobile devices.

Donald Trump Jr., former President Donald Trump’s eldest son, celebrated Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s performance in the vice presidential debate, telling CNN it was a “masterclass.”

“I think he literally won every issue across the board,” Trump Jr. told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in the spin room following the debate. “I think he was actually very comfortable in so many of the issues that Republicans tend to fail. He was probably more comfortable in those issues than most Republicans are, even on our strong points.”

Trump Jr. had urged his father to select Vance as his running mate, CNN has previously reported.

Trump Jr. also told Collins that his father shouldn’t do another debate because “I don’t think he can have a chance at getting a fair debate.”

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, claimed during the debate Tuesday that there are “20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country.”

Facts First: That number is significantly higher than most estimates. 

While the exact number of undocumented immigrants in the country difficult to track, multiple estimates show it is probably smaller than the number Vance floated during the debate. For instance, a 2024 report from Pew Research Center, estimated that the undocumented immigrant population in the US grew to 11 million in 2022. The report used data from the US Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey.

In 2024, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimated that there were about 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the US in 2021.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports curbing immigration and criticized the Biden administration’s border policies, estimated that there were approximately 12 million in May 2023.

Heading into tonight’s vice presidential debate, advisers to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz consistently sought to lower expectations, predicting that stylistically, they believed Ohio Sen. JD Vance could outperform Walz.

Walz aides don’t deny that Vance came across tonight as practiced and polished – anyone could see that particularly in the beginning, the governor appeared nervous. But they insist that putting aside the question of style, the governor won when it comes to substance.

One aide said the campaign has been pleased with how much focus the VP debate has placed on Donald Trump and his record, his past statements and proposals – including on issues like immigration and reproductive rights.

Prior to tonight’s debate, Harris-Walz aides had said one of the most important goals for Walz tonight was to show what a stark difference in vision there is between the Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance tickets. The campaign believes that difference was in fact, on clear display tonight.