Headline RoundupOctober 7th, 2020

Perspectives: What to Expect from the Vice Presidential Debate

2020 Election, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Coronavirus, LGBTQ Issues, Elections

Summary from the AllSides News Team

The 2020 Vice Presidential Debate will be held Wednesday night at 9pm ET in Salt Lake City, UT. The debate will be moderated by Susan Page, USA Today's Washington bureau chief. Vice President Mike Pence will face off against Senator Kamala Harris as the nation deals with crises of stalled stimulus negotiations and President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. Pence and Harris will be separated by plexiglass barriers for COVID-19 safety, a move requested by the Harris team and criticized by Pence’s spokeswoman. Additionally, attendees will be escorted out if they refuse to wear masks. Voices in outlets on all sides varied widely in their opinions, with voices in right-rated outlets generally favoring Pence and voices in left-rated outlets generally favoring Harris. Some voices called the VP debate historic, and other voices called it irrelevant. Some voices discussed the purported difficulty of the VP candidates’ task to convey their respective running mates’ messages.

Featured Coverage of this Story

From the Left

The Trailer: A guide to how Pence and Harris debate

Washington Post

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Washington Post

Analysis

President Trump had lost the first presidential debate. Democrats wanted the final weeks of the campaign to focus on the Republican nominee’s weaknesses. Mike Pence’s task was defending Trump, making a Democratic victory sound like a nightmare and disputing the Democrats’ central premise: that a Trump presidency would weaken and divide the country.

“If Donald Trump had said all of the things that you’ve said he said in the way you said he said them, he still wouldn’t have a fraction of the insults that Hillary Clinton leveled when she...

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From the Center

The most important vice presidential debate in American history

Brookings Institution

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Brookings Institution

Analysis

Wednesday night’s debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris will be the most important of its kind since VP debates began 40 years ago. While VP debates see less fanfare than the sparring matches at the top of the ticket, the 2020 races and the unique events surrounding it have made the Pence-Harris faceoff especially newsworthy.

As the president lays in Walter Reed hospital, battling a virus that has already killed 210,000 Americans, we are reminded that the vice president is a heartbeat away from the presidency....

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From the Right

Vice presidential debates have never moved the needle

Washington Examiner

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Washington Examiner

Analysis

Vice President Mike Pence and California Sen. Kamala Harris will face off on Wednesday for the first and only vice presidential debate during the 2020 campaign. But if history is any guide and people continue to vote the top of the ticket, the debate won't change much.

An analysis published by Gallup in 2012 declared that the median change following vice presidential debates in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008 was 1 percentage point.

"None of the eight vice presidential debates occurring from 1976 to 2008 appears to have meaningfully altered...

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