Who Won The Vice Presidential Debate? Mike Pence and Tim Kaine Split on Substance and Style

Republican Governor Mike Pence of Indiana and Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia dueled on the debate stage Tuesday night, but the evening was more about the top of their tickets — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — and how they measured up on temperament, qualifications and records.

At the end of 90 minutes of heated discussion, the debate appeared to be a wash, not moving the needle in any direction for either the Trump or Clinton campaign: While Kaine often appeared to have pulled ahead on substantive matters, Pence gave the appearance of a calm, level-headed nominee as he was bombarded by interruptions from his opponent.

All of that may amount to a small victory for the Trump camp, as it attempts to stop the bleeding after a disastrous week that began with his own poor debate performance last Monday and ended with revelations that Trump lost nearly $1 billion in 1995 that may have resulted in the New York businessman not paying federal income taxes for nearly 20 years.

Kaine, Clinton's vice presidential pick, sought to strike Trump at the outset of the debate by saying that for him and his wife, who have a son in the Marines, "the thought of Donald Trump as commander in chief scares us to death."

Kaine continued to hammer Trump on his temperament, accusing him of perpetuating an "outrageous lie" in insisting that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and admonished him for calling Mexicans criminals and rapists in his announcement speech last year — an argument that Kaine repeated throughout the evening.

Pence frequently found himself defending Trump, often by attempting to return the focus on Clinton by hitting her on accusations surrounding the Clinton Foundation, including accepting donations from foreign governments while she was secretary of state. He also slammed her over the use of a private server she used while in office.

However, some within the Trump camp thought the defense was likely not strong enough for the taste of Donald Trump.

Pence also struck at Clinton and Kaine on the Affordable Care Act, saying, "Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine want to build on Obamacare." He added: "For all the world, Hillary Clinton just thinks Obamacare is a good start."

Pence dodged many of the assertions by Kaine throughout the evening, in part, because Kaine helped him run down the clock through his many interruptions of the Indiana governor. For his part, Pence remained calm and kept his tone steady while he deflected and denied claims about Trump's ideas, while returning to the Obama administration's — and specifically Clinton's — foreign policy record.

"In some ways, it was the yin and yang of the presidential debate, the exact opposite of it, in that Trump was aggressive in that debate, and in this debate, Kaine came across as aggressive," said Jennifer Nicoll Victor, an associate professor of political science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. "Mike Pence came across as the more calm and serene one."

Pence did well on style, she noted, but when analysts look at substance, "I don't know how well he's going to come out on the number of 'Pinocchios.'" Pence "mostly shook his head," she said, rather than directly answer Kaine's questioning of Trump. Pence, who used to host a TV show and a radio show, "did a better acting job. He came across as more genuine."

A focus group conducted by prominent pollster Frank Luntz was turned off by Kaine's constant interruptions of Pence, as well as debate moderator Elaine Quijano.

The group also found that many of Kaine's hits didn't land because they appeared to come out of nowhere.

Vice presidential nominees — and their debates — rarely have a major impact on the outcomes of the general election. But this debate comes at a critical moment in the race as GOP nominee Donald Trump is still struggling to find any footing at all following a bad week. It began with a poor debate performance of his own last Monday and ended with a bombshell of a report about his $1 billion loss in 1995 and the possibility that he has not paid federal income taxes for two decades.

Following a strong showing by Clinton over Trump in the first presidential debate, Kaine and Pence will made their introduction to a national audience who is largely unaware of their careers. Although a surprising 64 percent of Americans said, according to a poll released on Monday, that they are likely to watch the vice presidential showdown, more than 40 percent could not name the vice presidential picks.

On Tuesday morning, the Clinton campaign may have given insight into Kaine's debate strategy: to show Pence as the person who could carry out Trump's vision because he's already enacted a version of it.

In most years, the winner of a vice presidential debate hardly, if ever, swings the general election significantly one way or the other. The 2016 campaign, though, has proven to be anything but normal.

"This vice presidential debate might have some interest," Carl Mallard, a political science professor at Savannah State University who specializes in voting behavior, told Patch. "Because the buzz is fairly clear that the first debate didn’t go well for Donald Trump. Reliable poll after reliable poll shows a vast difference in voters’ perceptions of Hillary Clinton’s success versus his."

Clinton surged in post-debate polls both at the state and national level. She held a nearly 3-point lead over Trump in the RealClearPolitics average Monday evening following her strong debate performance.

Kaine, the former head of the Democratic Party and currently a U.S. senator from Virginia, will be looking to build on that performance.

He's largely been playing the role of attack dog, doubling down on Clinton's offensive against Trump, especially last week after Trump's many blunders in the first debate.

"For five years, Donald Trump pushed a bigoted lie that President Obama wasn’t a U.S. citizen, all evidence to the contrary," Kaine said the day after the debate on Good Morning America. "All the fact checkers said that he was wrong but he kept pushing it dozens and dozens and dozens of times. When he was asked to explain it by Hillary and by the moderator, Lester Holt, he just didn’t have an explanation."

Pence, the governor of Indiana, meanwhile, has been seen by some as a cleanup man for Trump, acting as a "serious politician" who steps in when the Republican nominee ventures into unconventional political territory, as he has many times during the campaign.

In response to questions about Trump's debate performance, for example — which featured attacks on Rosie O'Donnell and an apparent admittance that he pays no federal income tax — Pence said that Trump "took command of the stage" and said his populist message "resonated all across America."

Pence will likely face more of the same questions about Trump at Tuesday's debate.

"He may want to stay away from revisiting some of the personal discussions that came out of that presidential debate and try to assure the voters that Trump, without going there and using that terminology, is qualified to be president and has the temperament to be president," Mallard, the political scientist, said.

Kaine will have to handle questions about how Clinton, a career politician, can affect change in the White House.

"The challenge will be a little bit opposite" of Pence's, Mallard said, "And that is to say, Hillary Clinton, while she has been a part of the system for many years — a U.S. senator, secretary of state and even while Bill Clinton was president, developing regular policy — is not going to continue the status quo or bring bout needed changes."

One thing you may notice more of during the veep debate, compared to last week's: preparation.

While Trump declined to do much formal debate work in the lead-up to last week's contest, both Pence and Kaine seem to understand the importance of it. Pence has been studying up with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, according to a New York Times report, while Kaine spent time with advisers in North Carolina.

Marc Torrence and Mary Ann Barton contributed reporting to this article.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons; U.S. Senate