For many undecided voters, it’s the visceral, gut reaction to candidates that sways them one way or another.
That tendancy loomed large in a virtual panel of 15 undecided voters from swing states hosted by longtime pollster Frank Luntz that concluded Mike Pence was the clear winner of the vice-presidential debate Wednesday night in Salt Lake City.
The voters found Democrat Kamala Harris’s attitude toward Vice President Mike Pence “condescending and abrasive,” Luntz told Fox News.
While they regarded Pence to be “too tired,” they concluded he was “vice presidential, or presidential.”
“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 said.
The voters didn’t like the fact that the vice president often continued talking past his allotted time.
But they were “far angrier,” Luntz said, with the performance of the Democratic senator, noting “the smiling, the smirking, the scowling” in reaction to Pence.
The pollster said the undecided voters were “more agitated with Kamala’s presentation than they were with Mike Pence.”
In a CNN panel of undecided voters in Arizona, only two of 10 thought there was a clear winner.
When polled as to who they thought came out on top, it was a four-four tie, with two abstentions.
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh opined on Twitter that Pence dominated Harris “so thoroughly and convincingly that the media’s only available tactic is to accuse him of being a sexist for debating a woman at a debate.”
Pence dominated Kamala so thoroughly and convincingly that the media’s only available tactic is to accuse him of being a sexist for debating a woman at a debate. These people are such clowns. Parodies of themselves. pic.twitter.com/OXaIKnV58Y
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 8, 2020
