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VP Debate 2020: Kamala Harris or Mike Pence, who emerged as the winner? Here's what polls have to say

Since the debate did not play out as chaotically as the first Presidential Debate did last month between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, it also left people confused as to who dominated the debate stage

The much-anticipated face-off between incumbent Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has finally ended and its time to compare both of their performances to see who came out the winner. 

Since the vice-presidential debate did not play out as chaotically as the first Presidential Debate did last month between President Donald Trump and his liberal challenger Joe Biden, it also left people confused as to who dominated the debate stage. As a result, while the post-debate polls conducted by most of the left-wing media platforms leaned toward picking Harris as the clear winner, other conservative mediums declared Pence as coming out on the top. 

An instant poll conducted by CNN put the California senator ahead of Trump's running mate with 59% favorable reviews while Pence ended up with 38%, which was 10 points lower than back in 2016 when he debated then-Democratic VP nominee Tim Kaine. Philip Bump, National correspondent for The Washington Post, shared a poll according to which Harris led by 49.4% while Pence only received 24.1 percent of favorable reviews, which incidentally was 1% more than the fly which sat on his head during the debate and was aired by mainstream media for more than two minutes. Yes, the fly was given its own place in the list of candidates in the poll, as was the plexiglass which separated the VP candidates during the debate, while polled at 3.4%. "Remember: this poll is entirely valid according to Trump's campaign team, so treat it as such," Bump noted. 

The fly, which made headlines across multiple news outlets, was so popular that USA Today chose to exclude Pence altogether. In its "Who won the vice presidential debate?" poll, the options were, "Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, The Pesky Fly, and I didn't watch" 

Meanwhile Boris Epshteyn, Trump's 2020 Strategic Advisor and former Special Assistant to POTUS, tweeted out a poll from News Nation which showed 69% of debate watchers favoring Pence compared to 29% for Harris. The Drudge poll also showed similar results with Pence at 69% and Kamala Harris polling at 31%. A Turning Point USA poll tweeted out by its founder and president Charlie Kirk showed Pence ahead of Harris. The former 69% of positive reviews while the latter only received 29%. 

Interestingly, ahead of the debate, a Fox News poll released on Wednesday, October 7, found that voters viewed Pence more negatively than positively by 1 point (47 favorable vs. 48 unfavorable), while Harris had a net positive of 13 (53-40) points. When it came to their own respective parties, both the candidates more or less tied when it came to scoring brownie points. While 85 percent of Democrats viewed Harris positively, 86 percent of Republicans viewed Pence positively.

That poll also found that Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by a 53-43 percent margin. This was unusual for a Fox News poll, mostly because it has famously been an outlet heavily favored by the POTUS throughout his first term and has typically known to be a right-leaning media platform.