Who won the debate?
Let’s cut right to the chase: it was a very good night for Harris and a very bad night for Trump. Harris won the debate and it seems as though the conventional wisdom is coalescing around that sentiment.
In an unscientific, but still fun poll of undecided voters aired live on CNN, 8/13 felt that Harris won the debate. 4/13 were in favor of Trump’s performance, and 1/13 was undecided.
CNN also asked registered voters who watched the debate how they felt about the two candidates’ performances. Of those, nearly two thirds said that Harris had a better debate. Before the start of the debate, the expectations for their performances were closer to 50/50. More interestingly, although 96% of Harris supporters felt she won the debate, only 69% of Trump supporters felt that way about their candidate.
Again, these aren’t carefully samples and representative polls. But, that doesn’t mean these are useless either. There is a big delta between how voters felt about their preferred candidate and their performance during the debate. Clearly, that delta is in Harris’ favor.
But how did it get to this point?
Key moments of the debate:
A POWERFUL HANDSHAKE
Harris in the first seconds of the debate hurried toward Trump and his podium with her hand plainly visible to shake his hand. Trump, on the other hand, was only heading toward his podium and not planning on shaking her hand at all. The image of Harris approaching Trump and meeting him at his podium drew a lot of discourse and seemingly contributed to some of the frustration and anger that Trump displayed throughout the debate.
ABORTION
Trump tried to come out swinging on abortion by attacking Harris and Democrats on what, if any, restrictions they would support. However, his argument was undercut by falsely claiming that Democrats were executing infants after birth.
Harris was able to utilize these moments to go on the offense and directly tie Trump to Project 2025 and JD Vance’s stance on abortion – which it seemed that Trump and Vance had never talked about. This was an effective moment whereby Harris was also able to speak for women and empathize with those who have been victims of rape and sexual assault, something that she effectively showcased Trump was a bad messenger on.
EATING ANIMALS AND RALLY SIZE
Harris did an exceptional job baiting, and truly, trolling Trump throughout the night. Although Trump was relatively focused on economic messaging and immigration in the first few minutes of the debate – and these are relatively weak spots for Harris in the polls – she was able to bait him into some mystifying and horrifying comments.
Trump lied, and was fact checked by the moderators, when he claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating peoples’ dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. This is a baseless conspiracy theory that some Republican accounts have been sharing online. Of course, the moderators clarified that city officials have no record of these instances ever taking place, and the rhetoric surrounding this whole situation is decidedly reckless and cruel toward immigrants. Harris also suggested that people have been leaving his rallies early, going so far as to invite people to watch these events themselves to see people getting disinterested and leaving. This drew the ire of Trump who, instead of attacking Harris, angrily defended his rallies during his limited time.
FOREIGN POLICY
Depending on who you ask, there are key vulnerabilities for both candidates here. Between the Afghanistan withdrawal and slow walking of aid to Ukraine, Harris (and Biden) have key areas of weakness that could have been relatively easy to exploit with some precision and focus.
Instead, Trump, when asked directly, could not say that he supported Ukraine and their victory instead of Russia’s. Instead, he baselessly claimed he would end the war in 24 hours, and even that he knew Putin very well.
Harris used this moment to showcase her knowledge of the military hardware sent to Ukraine, her support for Democracy, and Trump’s closeness to dictators like Putin and the way in which that can make the U.S. appear weak to our NATO and European allies. Amidst this discussion, there was very little cohesion in Trump’s argumentation as he lost the initiative of this section and could not effectively attack her administration’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. When he tried, he confusingly claimed to threaten and negotiate with the leader of the Taliban, someone named “Abdul”, although there is no one named Abdul who leads the Taliban.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Debates do less and less in our hyper-polarized environment to move the needle. Even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, which ultimately led him to drop out of the race, his standing in the polls only dropped by a few points.
Now, there is some minor evidence that Harris did better with undecided voters at the debate, and she certainly doesn’t seem like she lost any of her base given the skyrocketing donations on ActBlue ($45 million dollars on debate day alone).
But it’s hard to imagine any partisans changing their minds after the debate.
There are subjective guesses and priors swirling around the election modeling community and political reporters about how this might affect polling for the two candidates. Some suggest there may be a polling bounce for Harris.
If there is a bounce for Harris, it’s not something we’re going to see for several days at least, and it’s still far from certain that there will be one at all.
For the Partisan-Gravity election forecast, there will be no immediate changes. We’ll be reviewing the data that comes in, and if it seems apparent that there is some kind of bounce or jump in the polling, we may add a bounce adjustment in the model on the assumption that the jump will, at some point, fall back down. Only time will tell – but, we can say this: it was a great night for Harris and a bad night for Trump.