A pollster who viewed the vice presidential debate with 15 undecided voters said Vice President Mike Pence was the “clear winner” of Wednesday’s prime-time showdown.
Frank Luntz said he watched the debate with voters from eight swing states who concluded that Pence won the first and only debate against Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
“This is clearly a better debate than the first one,” Luntz told Fox News’s Brit Hume. “Mike Pence was the winner of tonight’s confrontation.”
Luntz said a majority of the voters found Harris’s demeanor to be “abrasive and condescending” before noting that Pence came across as “tired but vice presidential” to the group.
“If this is a battle over style and substance, which is often the case with undecided voters because they simply do not choose on policy — they also choose on persona — this was Mike Pence’s night,” Luntz concluded.
Some members of the group said they were “agitated with Kamala’s presentation,” the pollster said, and that her reactions to Pence, which included smiling and smirking while he answered most of the questions, was a turn-off.
Luntz said the undecided voters felt Harris aggressively attacked the Trump administration’s record on the coronavirus but that Pence did a sufficient job defending the policy steps taken throughout the past year.
