LVice Presidents compete for attention
Last week, we wrote about the attention that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have generated online, as well as their different tactics for engaging potential voters, and this week it’s the turn of their respective running mates.
While the presidential candidates are of course the main event, JD Vance and Tim Walz are driving headlines in their own way.
The below graph compares their levels of interest over time.
Interestingly, though Vance has been in the race longer with almost a full month’s head start over Walz, the Democratic VP has both a higher peak and a higher level of total engagement, despite fewer articles being published about him.
The articles about Walz have not always been positive, with conservative attacks on him for his military service, and his more distant family further distancing themselves from his politics.
Amid this negative coverage, which did resonate in some quarters, Walz’s favorables have remained the highest of any of the four candidates on either ticket, which shows the increased levels of attention have not done much to disrupt the governor’s image.
Vance has almost the opposite problem, with a public persona many felt they knew before he entered the race thanks to his memoir Hillbilly Elegy. However, low favorability ratings followed his campaign from the beginning, and old interviews being dug up and reported on led to a tough start for Vance.
The narratives that have cut through outside of social have been quite different to what we have seen in reporting generally. The top social post that mentions Vance is his closing statement from the VP debate, where he was generally seen as performing well.
His statement touched on what he implied was the broken promise of the American Dream, brought on by “broken leadership we have in Washington.”
This populist angle clearly resonated for Vance, as the video received 1.5 million engagements, almost triple the 550k engagements that Walz’s closing statement received.
@cbsnews America has "the most incredible people anywhere in the world," but "they're not going to be able to achieve their full dreams with the broken leadership that we have in Washington," says JD Vance in his closing statement. "We need change. We need a new direction." #VPDebate #vp #vance #walz #election2024 #politics ♬ original sound - cbsnews
@nbcnews #KamalaHarris, rebutting Donald #Trump ♬ original sound - nbcnews
And for Tim Walz, the fact of him owning a gun, as mentioned by Kamala Harris in her debate, was the top piece of media that resonated in terms of social video.
Neither of these narratives were among the top articles, which tended to focus on “childless cat ladies“, accusations of stolen valor, or tight polls in swing states.
The upshot
Perhaps even more so than with the presidential candidates, the top written reporting about their running mates only tangentially reflects what the public is actually engaging with. Vance’s perceived strength in the debate led to a high level of engagement, and a bump in favorability, while Walz’s firearm ownership was clearly a talking point.Â
Whichever way you slice it, it again shows the importance for the candidates of a multi-platform strategy, and for those looking to understand the race to have eyes on every platform.
If you’re interested in the topics shaping public interest, I’d point you in the direction of our longer report on that, which looks at five key issues shaping the election, from the economy to immigration to health care, which you can read here.
