JD Vance vs. Tim Walz Vice Presidential Debate: What to Expect

When Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz take the stage for the vice presidential debate in New York City on Tuesday night, it will be their first face-to-face meeting.

But Vance and Walz have been harassing each other from afar for weeks, playing the usual role of attack dog on opposing traffic tickets.

The stakes for their 90-minute debate, hosted by CBS News and scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. ET, are unusually high for an undercard matchup. Recent polls show the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is close nationally and in battleground states. Given that Trump has not agreed to a second showdown with Harris, Vance vs. Walz could well be the last debate before Election Day.

Polls also suggest Vance still has some work to do after making a poor first impression. In a recent NBC News national poll, 45% of registered voters said they view Vance unfavorably, compared to 32% who said they view him favorably – making him one of the least popular vice presidential candidates in the last 30 years. Walz, on the other hand, was rated positively by 40% and negatively by 33%. And with his baseless claims about pet consumption by Haitian immigrants and his tendency to stay ahead of Trump in politics, Vance has already attracted more attention than any other vice presidential candidate since another Republican, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, came onto the scene in 2008.

With that in mind, here are a few things to look out for when Vance and Walz meet in New York:

Does Walz win the game of expectations?

When Harris addressed Walz at a rally in Philadelphia in early August, he sounded enthusiastic about the prospect of facing Vance on a debate stage this fall.

“I can’t wait to debate the guy,” Walz said, before alluding to a vulgar false claim made about Vance online. “That is, when he's ready to get off the couch and show up.”

Less than two months later, Walz and his allies have sought to temper expectations for his own performance while raising them for his opponent, highlighting Vance's Yale Law School pedigree.

“Look, he’s (a) lawyer from Yale,” Walz said on MSNBC after the Trump-Harris debate last month. “I am a public school teacher. So we know where he stands.”

“I will work hard,” he added. “That's what I do. I expect that Senator Vance will be well prepared as a U.S. Senator and a Yale lawyer.”

It's a story as old as time: Candidates and their campaigns aim to make their opponents appear more formidable in the run-up to debates, trying to amplify the impact of great performances and blunt the impact of disappointments. Case in point: The Trump team has also tried to raise expectations for Walz's performance.

“Walz is very good at debates,” Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said on a call with reporters on Monday. “I would like to repeat that. Tim Walz is very good at debates. Really good. He has been a politician for almost 20 years. He will be very well prepared for tomorrow evening.”

The race card

“Are you a racist?” Vance, grinning at the camera, asked in an ad how his campaign was broadcast in the early days of his successful Senate run two years ago.

The question was Vance's attempt at rhetorical sarcasm — and it encapsulated a central theme in his young political career: that you can be angry about U.S. immigration policy and border security without being a racist.

More recently, Vance has been concerned with the debunked rumor about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. That raises the possibility that Walz will throw back a variation of Vance's question to him onstage Tuesday: Is He a racist?

Vance is prepared for such a scenario.

His aides often talk about how he handled a tense debate situation in 2022 as his Democratic opponent in the Senate, then-Rep. Tim Ryan accused him of promoting racist conspiracy theories. Vance quickly turned to his three biracial children—his wife, Usha, is Native American. Vance complained that his family “has been attacked online and in person by scumbags because you are so desperate for political power that you will accuse me, the father of three beautiful biracial babies, of racism.”

Usha Vance was among the small group that helped Vance prepare for the debate.

The fight for men and a fight for the future of masculinity

Both the Trump and Harris campaigns are targeting a group of voters that could determine whether they win the White House in November: young men.

Both Walz and Vance were at the forefront of this battle. For Walz, that meant he and the Harris campaign heavily promoted his background as a high school football coach, hunter and Midwest fixer father. For Vance, who would be the youngest man in generations to hold the vice presidential office, it's about his familiarity with many online spaces dominated by younger men.

They offer competing visions of masculinity, be it Walz's vision of traditional masculinity combined with his support for LGBTQ rights and his comfort talking about reproductive issues, or Vance's ideas on masculinity as presented in his memoirs and as he promotes starting a family. Each of them was attacked. Vance was labeled strange while Walz was ridiculed for his behavior.

“He won’t be the wildly gesticulating, effeminate caricature we see at rallies, pointing at Kamala Harris and dancing around on stage,” Miller said in the call Monday.

Expect the concept of masculinity — and how Walz and Vance have different ideas about what that means — to be an undercurrent in their messages.

I like the crossover

Walz was known as a moderate congressman who represented a swing district before carving out a more progressive identity as governor. As a candidate for vice president, he presents himself as a mainstream Midwesterner who enjoys Middle American pastimes. The Harris campaign clearly sees him as someone who can speak to heartland voters who have abandoned Democrats in recent cycles.

Vance is not far removed from his days as an anti-Trump pundit, but his far-right turn on Trump has been unrelenting. As Trump's vice presidential running mate, he has done little to woo voters who are fans of his best-selling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” and, like Vance once was, skeptical of Trump.

Walz is more likely to fight for the middle ground on Tuesday evening. Vance is more likely to decry such an attempt.

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., waltzing in Vance's debate prep, compared his state's governor to the liberal governor of California.

“The American people,” Emmer told reporters in a Trump campaign call on Monday, “will begin to realize what we in Minnesota have long known: that Tim Walz is nothing more than Gavin Newsom in a flannel shirt.”

Does Vance's performance — good or bad — encourage Trump to change his mind about another debate?

Trump has said he will not have further debates with Harris, noting that early voting is already underway. Harris, meanwhile, has committed to a debate with CNN on October 23.

But will Trump change his mind? Vance's performance could play a big role in whether he makes it.

If Vance performs well and creates positivity on the campaign trail, a jealous Trump might decide he wants another shot at the debate spotlight. If Vance does poorly, Trump may feel he has no choice but to debate again. Either way, it would be very uncharacteristic of Trump for his vice president to have the final say.

And regardless of what, if anything, comes next, Trump announced Monday that he will offer a segment-by-section analysis of the debate via his Truth Social account to soak up some of Vance's spotlight.