ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans JD Vance and democrat Tim Waltz will meet in the only vice-presidential debate on Tuesday Election 2024by bringing together undercards who have spent two months competing against each other and the opposing nominees who top the major party tickets.

The match, hosted by CBS News in New York, may not have the same stakes as the former president’s Sept. 10 debate Donald Trump and vice president Kamala Harris. But it offers her top lieutenants a new opportunity to step forward, vouch for their superiors and assume the time-honored role of a vice president: attack dog. It will include the largest television and online audience watching No. 2 before Election Day.

Walz, the 60-year-old governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a 40-year-old US senator from Ohio, have been eyeing possible approaches for weeks. Before Harris picked him, Walz was the Democrat who picked him coined by “strange” as a derogatory slur for the Republican ticket. Vance criticizes the governor’s progressive record as evidence that Democrats are too far left for voters.

Vance has made fun of his comrade’s military service. Walz criticizes Vance’s opposition to abortion rights and his views on family life. Both men have demonstrated their credentials as small-town, middle-America residents – in contrast to Trump, the billionaire New Yorker, and Harris, a California native from the Bay Area.

It sets up a potentially violent night in Manhattan. Here are the dynamics to consider when the rivals meet in person for the first time:

Is it more Walz vs. Vance or Harris vs. Trump?

Running mates have a balancing act. Their main job is to advocate for their superiors. But a vice presidential candidate’s credibility and connection to the audience are important factors in achieving this goal. If a voter doesn’t like Messenger, they are less likely to buy the message.

Getting into the debate, a new AP-NORC poll suggests that Walz is more popular than Vance, potentially posing a greater challenge to the Republican.

The poll found that only a quarter of registered voters have a somewhat or very favorable opinion of the Ohio senator, while about half have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion. About a quarter don’t know enough to say. Walz is viewed positively by about 4 in 10 voters and negatively by about 3 in 10; The rest don’t know enough to say.

Still, Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat and 2016 vice presidential candidate, warned attendees not to think too much about themselves.

“The only advice that matters is to protect the top of the ticket,” Kaine insisted, recalling the 2000 duel between Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat Joe Lieberman. “Cheney continued to attack (Al) Gore, and Lieberman tried to make himself sympathetic instead of defending Gore. … You can’t leave attacks unanswered.”

Abortion rights and views on family will be at the forefront

Democrats believe Abortion Rights and Reproductive Health Care will motivate their regular voters and influence swing voters.

Walz has already tried to capitalize on this by mixing his story into the argument. The governor often talks about how he and his wife Gwen required fertility treatments to have her daughter. Democrats resented Vance for this 2021 joke about “childless cat ladies” shapes American life. And Walz was eager to reiterate Harris’ emphasis on abortion rights as the anchor of her overall campaign theme: “Freedom.”

Vance and Trump, meanwhile, have struggled to deliver a unified message on abortion rights — a reflection of how politically fraught the issue has become for Republicans since then Support for abortion access has increased since then 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and end a woman’s constitutional right to have an abortion. Trump boasts about appointing conservatives who helped defeat Roe and return abortion regulation to state governments. Many Republicans now want to go beyond state bans and limit the process at the federal level, but Trump has suggested that repealing Roe is enough. He has it too wavered over how he would vote on a referendum in Florida that would expand abortion rights.

Vance said in August that Trump would veto a national ban if it were approved by Congress. A few weeks later, during Trump’s debate with Harris, the former president declined to answerHe said, “I haven’t discussed it with JD.” The Harris campaign reinforced Vance’s statement as a Senate candidate that he would like to see a nationwide ban on abortion.

Vance and Walz compete for economic advantage

Vance often makes clearer arguments than Trump when it comes to boosting American manufacturing, helping workers and punishing companies. He regularly attacks the Biden-Harris administration over inflation. If there’s one broad issue on which Vance wants to put Walz on the defensive and President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, it’s the economy.

For her part, Harris declares that “building the middle class will be a critical goal of my presidency.” She acknowledges the struggles of many consumers but generally defends Biden’s overall record of economic growth, low unemployment and rising wages since he inherited the COVID-19 freefall.

Both campaigns contain competing packages of economic proposals, including different tax cuts and subsidies for specific sectors. Expect the candidates to spend a lot of time convincing the dwindling portion of persuadable voters that their ticket better fits the everyday economic concerns of most U.S. households.

The two are expected to talk about their Central American roots

Even if the debate is about Harris and Trump, the two candidates have come here not least because of their respective biographies.

Trump’s election was an attempt to further solidify the Republican Party as an electoral vehicle for Middle America. The author of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” who grew up in small-town Ohio, has roots that match his economic populism in a way that billionaire Trump does not.

Walz and Harris both grew up in the middle class, but Walz remains firmly rooted there, from his childhood on a farm in Nebraska to the high school classrooms of Minnesota before he ran for office. It is both a juxtaposition and an affirmation of Harris’ story as the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.

Both men have made their families part of their political identities. Everyone has a working spouse. Walz has two children – a young adult and a teenager. Vance has three young sons. The Walzes and Vances are more traditional political families than those of the presidential candidates: Harris has adult stepchildren from her 10-year marriage to Doug Emhoff; Trump has five children from three marriages.

Even as they try to keep their bosses in the spotlight, expect both vice presidents to emphasize their own stories.

The responsibility for fact checking lies with the candidates

CBS announced on Friday that this would be the case up to the candidates to keep each other honest in Tuesday’s debate – a sticking point in previous debates this year.

In the June debate between Trump and Biden, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash limited follow-up questions and no fact checking every participant. In the September debate between Trump and Harris, ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis subjected to factual corrections to some of Trump’s most egregious misrepresentations.

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.