The Debate is Over. Now Back to What Matters.
Trump had a terrible debate but the fundamentals of the race haven't changed. Here's what the campaigns are focused on in the next few weeks.
Tuesday night ended the pomp and circumstance phase of this election season and started the final 53 day sprint to election day. Both campaigns will now get down to business executing their respective campaign plans. Instead of doing a play-by-play breakdown of Tuesday night’s debate I thought it would be far more useful for our purposes to take stock of where the race stands following Tuesday night’s debate and what the campaigns will set their sights on for the next few weeks.
Tuesday night was not a good night for Donald Trump. I don’t say that because he did or said anything fatal that will cost him the election. Talking about migrants “eating the pets” and praising Viktor Orban as “smart” didn’t help his cause but he was generally the same guy we see every day saying the same things he’s said a million times. But the debate as a whole was a massive missed opportunity for his campaign. I, more than most Democrats, was worried that a strong debate performance from Trump could put the race out of reach for Harris. While I think she has run a near flawless campaign thus far, the unpopularity of the Biden Administration and her late entrance into the race has given Trump an upper hand strategically and a clearer path to 270 electoral votes. In front of one of the largest television audiences ever to watch a presidential debate Trump missed nearly every opportunity to do what he needed to do: tie Harris to Biden (Read about what each candidate needed to accomplish Tuesday night here and see decide for yourself how they did!). His failure to take control of the race has left the door wide open for Harris and energized her campaign as she heads back out on the trail.
Trump has no one to blame but himself for his bad performance. I’ve heard people blaming the moderators or ABC News or any other number of people. But from a purely campaign strategy perspective (because that’s what we really care about here!) Trump himself, and himself alone, walked into every single trap that Harris set for him. And these were not sophisticated traps. They were obvious. A Republican candidate with more discipline and preparation would have easily ignored or swatted away most of Harris’s traps and diversion tactics. His lack of self control ended up being the highlight of the night and let Harris off the hook during her most difficult questions.
So, where does the race stand following the debate? In a normal world during a normal campaign cycle I strongly believe debates don’t matter. Barack Obama had a disastrous first debate loss to Mitt Romney in 2012 and paid very little price for it– not to mention that Trump “lost” to Hillary Clinton all three times they debated and still won the election. Despite Trump’s terrible night the race hasn’t fundamentally changed. The race is still very close, the electorate is still very polarized and the outcome will likely come down to how the remaining undecided voters in the seven swing states break over the next 50 days. When voting begins and real voters start casting real votes we’ll get a better picture of who is showing up to vote which could give us clues about where the election is headed.
As of this writing there haven’t been any credible post-debate polls that I would feel comfortable highlighting here but I don’t foresee any statistically significant movement in the polls based on what happened Tuesday night. And remember: to be able to say Trump or Harris got a boost or lost ground from the debate we’d need to see a trend over multiple polls. A flash poll commissioned by CNN after the debate shows why I’m not betting on any major shifts in the race following Tuesday night: only 4% of voters polled said they changed their vote after watching the debate (though it doesn't say in which direction) and 82% of respondents said the debate didn’t affect their choice.
To take it one step further, a CBS News/YouGov poll released last week asked voters in Michigan who had stated a preference between Trump and Harris (meaning they’re not undecided) if they would ever consider voting for the other candidate. Only 1% of voters who have decided to vote for Harris would consider voting for Trump and only 2% of voters who have decided to vote for Trump would consider voting for Harris. If similar views are held across the other swing states then it’s very unlikely the debate changed many minds and shifted this race.
With the debates and conventions behind us and the first absentee ballots starting to drop this week, both candidates will shift focus back to what really matters: voter communication. In the coming days, watch each campaign closely for clues about how they view the race and insight into their strategies. Where will each candidate be? (and I don't mean what state– specifically what part of those states). Are they expanding the map and trying to put new states in play or are they consolidating support in a smaller number of critical states? Who are they targeting with their paid media? What communities are they knocking doors in and making phone calls to? Time is the most important resource for any campaign and where the campaign is sending the candidate and top surrogates can give helpful clues on their strategy.
Let’s dissect Harris’s schedule for the next four days because it’s very interesting. Harris will be in North Carolina on Thursday for events in Charlotte and Greensboro, then Pennsylvania on Friday with stops in Johnstown (!) and Wilkes-Berre (!!). Tim Walz, for his part, is set to visit Kent County, Michigan (!) on Thursday, which is number five on my Swing Counties Power Rankings list, before heading to Wisconsin on Friday and Saturday. The campaign said yesterday they will have rallies and events in every media market of every swing state in the next four days. That’s a lot of hustle.
North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are obviously important swing states. But the locations Harris and Walz are visiting within those states tell the story of a campaign that is running a far more aggressive, offensively minded campaign then Democrats ran in 2016 and 2020. The Harris campaign is doubling down on their plan to get Harris and Walz out of the traditional Democratic comfort zones of big cities and out into the suburban and rural areas of these states (as they did in Georgia two weeks ago). Luzerne and Cambria Counties, where Harris will be Friday, are traditionally Republican counties that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 (though Josh Shapiro won Luzerne in 2022). But with the Democratic base energized and happy Harris wants to fight Trump on his own turf by contesting red counties and attempting to drive Trump’s margins down. If she runs up big margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, for example, while successfully limiting her margin of loss in places like Cambria County, she wins Pennsylvania and likely the election. I was pleasantly surprised to hear recently that the Harris campaign was actively knocking doors in Adams County, Pennsylvania which is a deep red county that a Democrat hasn’t won since 1964. Harris won’t stop that trend but that’s the point.
Trump, for his part, will be in Arizona today and Las Vegas on Friday. Nevada is a far more important state this year than its six electoral votes suggest. Whichever candidate loses Pennsylvania on election night will almost certainly need to win Nevada to have any chance of still winning. Trump has campaigned almost exclusively in rural and suburban communities for the last four years. With Harris now focused on similar communities this campaign will likely come down to whether Trump can solidify his support in those areas with voters who don’t particularly like him but may have a negative view of Harris or whether Harris can make enough inroads over the final 50 days to flip a few key swing states in her favor.
With voting officially starting in a matter of days in some states the campaigns will also turn their focus to direct voter communications and the ground game battle. There was an article this week by Semafor about how Republicans are starting to panic that the Trump campaign's unrelenting focus on voter fraud has been at the expense of building a credible field operation to get their voters out. We’ll keep an eye on this moving forward but if Trump heads into election day without a credible ground game it would be a self-inflicted wound magnitudes larger than his debate performance Tuesday night.
Party conventions and debates are great for social media and cable news networks. But they often pull the candidate off the campaign trail and away from undecided voters to talk to donors, activists and voters who have already made up their minds. Now we’re back to the parts of the campaign that truly matter: voter communication and the final sprint to election day.