Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence, right, and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine shake hands during the vice-presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence, right, and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine shake hands during the vice-presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Va., Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2016. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

WASHINGTON (Diya TV) — Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence scored a narrow win over opponent Tim Kaine in the debate Tuesday night, according to a CNN/ORC instant poll, with 48% of voters who watched the debate saying Pence did the better job while 42 percent think Kaine had the best night.

Equally “unknown” politicians in their own rights, viewers at home seemed to be more impressed with Pence than Kaine.

About two-thirds of debate-watchers said Pence’s performance was better than they expected, just 14 percent said he did worse than they thought he would. Reviews of Kaine tilted toward the negative, with 43 percent saying he did worse than they expected and 38 percent saying he outperformed their expectations.

The debate itself focused more on the main card candidates than the ones on stage. The majority of viewers at home said Kaine did a better job defending Clinton, 58 percent, while just 35 percent thought Pence better defended Trump.

Regardless, 29 percent of debate watchers said what they saw Tuesday made them more apt to vote for Trump, compared with 18 percent who said it made them more likely to back Clinton. However, most of the watchers Tuesday night, 53 percent, said their vote wasn’t swayed by what they had seen. After the first Clinton-Trump debate last week, 34 percent said it made them more apt to vote Clinton, 18 percent Trump.

And 48 percent said Kaine had a better understanding of the issues, edging out Pence at 41 percent. Clinton topped Trump by a better than 2-to-1 margin on that score after their first debate.

The poll was conducted by interviews with 472 registered voters who watched the October 4 vice presidential debate. Results among debate-watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Respondents were originally interviewed as part of a September 28-October 2 telephone survey of a random sample of Americans, and indicated they planned to watch the debate and would be willing to be re-interviewed when it was over.