Only a handful of voters say that last week’s presidential debate caused them to reconsider their support for either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, according to a new national poll.
A slew of political pundits and media analysts said that Harris bested Trump in the debate – their first and potentially only face-to-face encounter ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5.
However, only 3% of debate watchers said the showdown in Philadelphia caused them to reconsider whom they may support as president, according to a Monmouth University national poll released on Tuesday.
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Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump speak during their presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Just more than seven in 10 respondents said that the debate between the Democratic and Republican Party presidential nominees did not raise any doubts about the candidate they were already supporting in the White House race. Eight percent of those surveyed said some doubts were raised but that the debate did not change their minds on their support. Additionally, 17% offered that they did not see or hear any part of the debate.
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“How much this election is shifting is measured in inches rather than yards right now,” Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray said.
“We are basically at the point where turning out 10,000 extra voters in a key swing state could determine the outcome. Polling tells us the broad contours of the race, but it cannot measure these types of micro-shifts,” Murray emphasized.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall on Thursday Sept. 12, 2024 in Tucson, Arizona. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
Trump, in social media posts and in a couple of Fox News Channel interviews following the debate, said that he won the showdown with Harris.
“That was my best Debate, EVER,” he wrote in a social media post.
During a “Fox and Friends” interview, he argued that “we had a great night, we won the debate.”
However, Harris, in her first rally last week after the debate, charged that Trump’s performance “was the same old show, that same tired playbook that we’ve heard for years… with no plans for how he would address the needs of the American people because, you know, it’s all about him, it’s not about you.”
According to the Monmouth poll, 49% of registered voters nationwide said they would either definitely (39%) or probably (10%) vote for Harris. In a separate question, just over four in 10 said they would definitely (34%) or probably (10%) cast a ballot for Trump.
Nearly every national poll conducted after last week’s debate indicates Harris with a lower to mid-single digital advantage over Trump in the race to succeed President Biden in the White House.
However, it remains a margin-of-error race in the seven key battleground states that will likely determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Bojangles Coliseum, in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Pointing to those surveyed who said they are extremely motivated to vote, Murray spotlighted that “Trump right now is doing better with motivated voters than he is with the overall electorate. This includes a good number of voters who may have sat out the 2020 contest. Perhaps they were exhausted by the Trump era when they stayed home four years ago, but that feeling has faded, and now they are more upset with the Biden presidency.”
“To counter that, Democrats will be trying to light a fire under voters who already have concerns about Trump but aren’t fully engaged in the election,” he added.
The Monmouth University poll was conducted Sept. 11-15, with 803 registered voters nationwide questioned. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire.
