Tim Waltz and JD Vance Vice Presidential Debate | CBS News
Professor of Political Science Dr. Lee Hannah and his Campaigns and Elections class administered a survey to 384 students at Wright State University. The survey offers a glimpse into students’ political leanings and intentions ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Student Caleb Murray explores students' opinions on the Vice President candidates and the effects it may have on the election.
Background
The media hotly covers few topics during the presidential campaign season as much as who the candidates will pick as their running mate. It is one of the most public statements a candidate can make and can be an important piece of messaging in its own right.
Usually, it can be expected that most supporters of a presidential candidate will also support their choice of running mate but there will always be exceptions, especially if the chosen running mate is particularly controversial or has a reputation that is not below that of the candidate.
In this election cycle, it seems that there has been much more controversy over Donald Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance then Harris’s choice of Tim Walz.
This shows up not just in the dominant media narratives but in public polling.
According to 538’s polling aggregates, Walz has a +4 favorability rating while Vance is sitting at a +9.4 unfavorability. This is quite a sharp difference and is a bigger gap in approval ratings than exists between the two presidential candidates themselves.
I want to examine how much this gap crosses party lines and whether it holds strong with undecided voters. I'm particularly interested in seeing if, after several months of bad polls, Trump voters view the choice of Vance as a mistake.
The survey
Dr. Hannah’s Campaigns and Elections class at Wright State University conducted a survey of 385 students. It was conducted using a mix of paper and online surveys.
I will mainly focus on questions about the favorability of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates rating them as favorable, unfavorable or “no opinion” and, the other relevant question, “to what extent do you feel your chosen candidate’s VP pick affects their campaign?” in which respondents could answer positively, negatively or not sure.
Results
83 students said that they have a favorable opinion of Trump, out of that group 42 said that they had a favorable opinion of Vance and 7 said that they had an unfavorable opinion of him.
This suggests that while most Trump supporters are loyal to the ticket the campaign perhaps has not done an adequate job of endearing him to even the Republican faithful. This poll also suggests he does not resonate well with swing or undecided voters, a concern many raised upon his selection.
12 students answered “no opinion” on whether Trump had favorable views on Vance and 7 replied “no opinion “about Harris sharing those views on the candidate.
This suggests that the fears by the media may be correct, and Vance is not a nominee with broad appeal.
Analysis
To figure out if this is true, we have to look at Walz’s numbers and see if they are really much better than Vance’s.
One interesting point is that, like in the case of Vance, many people that have favorable views of Harris do not seem to have a clear opinion on Walz.
49 of the 120 Harris supporters polled had no opinion on Walz.
This suggests that many people simply do not pay a great deal of attention to Vice Presidential candidates and do not see or even tune out the extensive media coverage.
Our polls do, however, lightly suggest that Walz may come off better to undecided voters than Vance. There were 20 respondents that had no opinion on Harris but had favorable opinions on Walz which marked improvement over how Vance fares in that same metric.
Overall, 55.8% of people that favor Harris favor Walz while 50.6% of respondents that favor Trump also favor Walz. While Walz’s advantage here is relatively minor, our findings are consistent with their approval ratings in all major polls, suggesting that this would be duplicated if the survey was run again.
I broke the aforementioned question about candidate favorability down into a percentage to gain further insight into how voters view their parties' chosen VP candidate. Using this measurement, we can find that 59.2% of Harris supporters see Walz as a positive. While only 49.4% of Trump supporters view Vance the same way.
This shows an even more severe contrast between the two candidates with Democrats clearly much more confident in their parties pick then Republicans.
The difference between the candidates here is almost twice the difference between their favorability implying perhaps there are those that like Vance but are unsure if he will benefit from the campaign.
I would expect public knowledge of Vance’s low public approval ratings to have a negative effect on how he is viewed by Trump supporters with many still unconvinced he is an asset to the campaign.
As with the previously analyzed question, a few voters see the candidate as a negative for their own party, though many responded that they are unsure.This once again speaks to the fact that many people simply do not pay that much attention to the vice-presidential candidate.
According to a 2010 study from scholars at the University of California, Irvine, the effects of vice-presidential candidates on elections are fairly negligible, usually less than 1% which certainly tracks with this phenomenon.
Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko, perhaps the most notable scholars on this topic, found that despite common wisdom there is little evidence that running mates can deliver their home states come election time.
However, they have also made sure to point out that voters do consciously or not evaluate the candidate’s decision making abilities based on high profile choices like their pick for VP and it also may shape how they view the candidate ideologically.
While most people might not directly choose not to vote for Trump because of Vance, his unpopularity could lead people to doubt Trump's choices in appointments or make them think that he is too far right. This shows that despite many unsure answers, these questions are important to put on surveys as they can tell us about the whole mood of the election.
It is far from a sure thing it seems very possible that the differences in confidence in these VP choices could have a palpable impact in a very tight election.
