Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have come out on top after her first debate with former President Donald Trump, although it remains unclear how her strong performance will translate at the polls.
Many experts have suggested that Harris won the debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, and early polling has also leaned in her favor. Per a report from FiveThirtyEight, as of 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, an average of 57 percent of debate watchers nationwide said that Harris outperformed her Republican counterpart. The results were compiled from three national surveys reviewed by the pollster, which also found that Trump was the favored winner by only 34 percent of viewers on average.
The Democratic vice president successfully baited Trump to lash out early in the night, pushing him to veer off-course during his answers and repeat several familiar false lines of attacks regarding Democrats‘ handling of abortion or the results of the 2020 presidential election. D. Stephen Voss, political science professor at the University of Kentucky, told Newsweek that Harris “didn’t need to poke Trump much” to get a rise out of him on stage, writing via email, “Trump’s performance was weak from start to finish.”
Donald Trump speaks during his first debate against Kamala Harris on September 10 in Philadelphia. An analyst told Newsweek that Trump’s debate performance was “weak,” but it remains unclear if it will translate to a win for Harris come November.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
“He landed few blows against Harris, and the longer the debate proceeded, the more blows Trump landed against himself,” Voss added.
Voss added that “right-wing listeners would recognize many of Trump’s references” throughout the debate night but that the former president “doesn’t know how to speak to the ‘normies’ who swing most elections.”
“If Trump didn’t tank his presidential run tonight, it will prove that debates don’t matter much,” Voss wrote.
In contrast, Harris’ crucial goal of the night was to reach voters who “remain on the fence” over whom they plan to back in November, as Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek that the vice president did a “good job overall” presenting her platform to viewers.
“The overall tenor of Harris’ presentation was more optimistic and forward looking,” Kall wrote over email. “She talked about turning the page on political rancor that has plagued the country during the last several administrations. Undecided voters generally gravitate towards a more optimistic message since they are more casual political observers and don’t follow the daily machinations of the Washington, D.C., beltway.”
But no matter how strong she performed, political analyst Craig Agranoff said that a debate’s impact on the trajectory of the election is hard to measure.
Kamala Harris listens during the presidential debate in Philadelphia on September 10. While many experts concur that Harris won Tuesday’s debate with Donald Trump, it remains unclear if the strong performance will hold sway at the polls.
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“Debates can shape narratives and provide key moments, but their significance often depends on the viewer’s perspective,” Agranoff said in a text to Newsweek on Wednesday.
“For deeply entrenched voters, they may reinforce existing beliefs rather than shift opinions,” he added. “In a race as polarized as this one, even a perceived loss for Trump might not move the needle significantly, as many voters have already made up their minds.”
CNN data reporter Harry Enten said on Wednesday that Harris could expect to see a spike in the polls in the days following the debate, pointing to past election years where first-debate winners “saw rises in the polls of two points or more” after a strong performance.
Still, Enten predicts that the race for the White House will remain close. As of Wednesday, Harris was leading Trump by 2.7 percentage points (47 percent to 44.3 percent) on average across national polling, per FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate. The New York Times national polling average shows Harris with a smaller lead, beating Trump 49 percent to 47 percent.
