What the Post Debate Polls are Telling Us About the Race
Recent polling has provided insight into how voters viewed Harris's debate performance and what that could mean for the race--and the chances of a second debate.
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It’s fair to say that poll season mania is now in full swing. We’re entering the part of the election cycle where a new poll seems to pop up on social media every couple of hours. Since the debate last week there have been a barrage of reputable polls that have by and large been very positive for Harris. As polling and communications guru Dan Pfeiffer wrote about earlier this week, the polling tea leaves seem to indicate Harris got a modest post debate bounce.
While most of the focus in the traditional media and online has been on the topline horse race results, there was plenty of good data buried deep in these polls that might give us a few clues about where this race is heading and what each campaign might be thinking about in the final 48 days. Here are three things that jumped out at me:
Debate Watchers Liked What They Heard from Harris
In the days after the debate, Trump’s spin machine was turned up to 11 trying to make the case that he “won” the debate. He cited polls from conservative media that claimed he won, he made unsubstantiated claims that ABC News gave Harris the questions in advance and he even suggested that Harris was wearing an earpiece during the debate. I think we can all chalk that up to bluster and hurt feelings. But one piece of Trump’s spin did catch my eye. In shutting down the idea of a second debate with Harris, Trump compared himself to a prize fighting boxer who shouldn’t have to do a rematch.
His ridiculous analogy aside, Trump didn’t reject a second debate because he believes he won. He and his team rejected the debate because they’re seeing what we’re all seeing in the data: voters who see Harris like what they’re seeing. And giving her another 90 minutes in front of 50+ million voters just weeks before the election would not be helpful to him.
Going into the debate, Harris had a tall task. She needed to introduce herself to the good chunk of voters who still didn’t know her, come across as presidential and hammer home her increasingly popular agenda. Most people would agree she had a good night and Trump missed a major opportunity. But let’s look under the hood of a post debate YouGov/Yahoo poll to see specifically what voters thought.
The first question dealt with issues discussed during the debate. Of the seven issue areas asked about, voters thought Harris had better answers on all but one area (immigration). And even the immigration result was closer then it’s been in other polls where Trump has led Harris by 8-10 points on who would handle immigration better. Most notably for this election, Harris had a 23 point lead among voters who watched the debate on who had better answers on abortion and a six point lead on cost of living, which is a very important topic for voters right now. In this same poll, for example, cost of living was rated as the the top issue.
The second question was more about style. Voters viewed Harris as the truthful, strong, competent candidate who was focused on policy while Trump was viewed as dishonest, incompetent and unfocused (relative to Harris). Most importantly, over half of voters watching said she was “more presidential” than Trump (only 35% of voters felt Trump was more presidential). Accomplishing that piece was very important for Harris and a good sign for her campaign that voters who hear from her believe she seems presidential–or at least more presidential than Trump which is what matters in a two way race.
The next question is where we start to get down to business. Going into the debate we said that many voters still had questions about Harris. Nearly 30% of voters in the last NYT/Siena poll said they still needed to hear more from her. So the debate was likely her last chance before a large national audience to get that done. The question above asked voters how much they learned about Harris by watching the debate. The good news for Harris is that 69% of voters who watched the debate said they learned at least something about her. Not bad, but the million dollar question is: what did they learn?
When asked what voters learned about Harris the top three responses were “what she plans to do as president” (34%), “temperament” (32%) and “fitness to be president” (32%). While this question doesn’t tell us how voters felt about her plans as president, for example, it does show that Harris’s messaging on her policy plans and her goal of drawing a distinct contrast between her and Donald Trump on the question of who is more fit to be president may have penetrated. Now let’s see if people had a positive or negative view about what they heard from her.
According to the question above, voters who watched the debate and learned something about Harris overwhelmingly thought it was “mostly positive.” Only 14% of voters reported what they learned about Harris was negative. So, to put a bow on this, a large number of voters who watched the debate learned at least something about Harris-likely about her plans as president- and what they learned was overwhelmingly positive.
I’m not going to walk through the numbers for Trump as slowly as I did for Harris because this post is meant to be about her numbers. But, it’s fair to say his numbers were not great. To pick one example, when voters were asked if the debate made them think better or worse about Donald Trump, 38% said worse while only 20% said better. That’s not catastrophic stuff but it’s certainly not where you hope your candidate will be after a debate.
“Who will fight for me?”
On the third night of the Democratic National Convention former President Obama summed up the seminal questions that voters will ask themselves as they make their decision in this election:
“Who will fight for me? Who’s thinking about my future; about my children’s future — about our future together?”
It sounds overly simplified but it’s truly at the heart of every campaign. People are going to vote for their own self interest and that of their family. The good news for Kamala Harris is that voters who watched the debate had pretty strong feelings about this issue.
Voters in the YouGov/Yahoo poll we’ve been digging into were asked whether they believed Harris and Trump only cared about themselves. Nearly half (48%) of respondents disagreed with the statement “the only thing Kamala Harris cares about is herself” while 51% agreed with the same statement about Donald Trump. We’ll see how that translates into votes but it’s a positive sign for Harris. Not for nothing, 51% of voters didn’t believe Trump shared their values.
I know this is just one poll but we’re seeing similar data in other polls. Polls often don’t ask the same questions which can make comparing results across polls difficult and less than scientific but a post debate poll from ABC News found that voters felt Harris better understood their problems by a 10 point margin. More importantly, she has been slowly trending up on this question, presumably as voters learn more about her.
Harris’s favorables are trending up
A crazy thing happened yesterday. For the first time in nearly two years Kamala Harris’s favorable/unfavorable rating was back to even. Despite the barrage of Republican attack ads being dropped across the country, Harris has erased a -17 approval rating deficit because voters by and large like her and are responding positively to her message and her campaign. By comparison, polling averages currently have Trump’s favorable/unfavorable at -10, which has been steady for a couple of months. It’s easy to say her recent polling has been more about dislike for Trump then it is a like for her. But the rise in her favorables has largely coincided with the rise in her poll numbers which make me believe that voters are liking what they’re seeing. Yes, Trump unpopularity and voters yearning for anyone not named Biden or Trump helps. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.
After walking through how voters viewed Harris’s debate performance it’s easy to see why Trump and his campaign would not want to give Harris another 90 minutes in front of the nation. On the flip side you can see why Harris might benefit from another shot. In the absence of another debate Harris will need to look for ways to get her message out to as large an audience of voters as possible– the voters that don’t watch cable news or attend rallies. Watch for her to take her message to non-traditional channels like podcasts, cooking shows, black media, etc. as a way of getting her popular message out to the voters that might not be tuned in to the election at the moment.
And, as we talked about Monday, watch for Trump to try and slow Harris’s momentum but changing the subject and trying to draw the narrative back to friendlier territory for him. Lost in the “eating the pets” news cycles is Trump’s recent attempts to gain traction by promising tax cuts on everyone and everything: from SALT to social security benefits to overtime pay. But Trump hasn’t shown any ability to stay on message for more than 24 hours so we'll see if this latest attempt is fruitful or if he’ll be off onto something else before the weekends.