Five weeks before the final day of voting in the U.S. presidential election, Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate represents what will probably be the last face-to-face showdown between the Democratic and Republican tickets for the White House.
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are scheduled to confront each other at 6 p.m. Pacific time in a 90-minute showdown hosted by CBS News.
With no more debates planned between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the battle of the No. 2s is the last mass-viewership event on the campaign calendar. The debate is expected to draw tens of millions of viewers.
While experts say that vice presidential debates almost never alter the trajectory of a national election, the debate is expected to be closely watched by partisans on both sides and by the small number of voters still making up their minds.
Polls show that the Democrat, Walz, has a more positive profile with the public. Vance has drawn a disproportionate share of the negative attention.
The strongest rebukes have come for the Republican’s claims that the U.S. is being run by Democrats and “a bunch of childless cat ladies,” and for his insistence that he should be able to “create stories” about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating family pets to support his contention that immigrants are hurting America.
Walz has been asked to explain his comment, during a talk about the need for gun control, about “weapons of war, that I carried in war.” Though Walz served for more than two decades in the National Guard, he never deployed to a war zone or carried a gun in combat.
Vance, 40, is expected to lean most heavily into the state of the economy and illegal immigration. Surveys show more Americans have confidence in the Republicans on those issues.
Walz, 60, will likely talk about abortion rights and use the issue to accuse the Republicans of using the government to reach too deeply into people’s personal lives. Polls show the Democrats have the advantage when they discuss that issue, which they frame as “reproductive freedom.”
Moderating the session will be “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, host of the network’s Sunday show, “Face the Nation.”
CNN hosted the first debate of the presidential runoff season, a late June contest between former President Trump and President Biden. CNN’s hosts did not intervene to correct misstatements by the candidates.
That changed in September, when Trump and Harris debated, and the ABC News moderators corrected several of Trump’s misstatements. They didn’t correct Harris.
Moderators will not correct the candidates’ misstatements, but the New York Times reported that CBS plans to display a QR code that will send viewers to CBS’ website, where the network’s journalists will be fact-checking in real time.
