It's now been a week since Donald Trump and Kamala Harris faced off in their first (and most likely only) debate before the election. I didn't sugarcoat my perception of the debate. I thought Trump performed horribly. He missed many opportunities and let Harris bait him repeatedly. That said, focus groups showed that Kamala's performance didn't impress independent voters one bit. But that's not the impression we're getting from the media.
The media was always going to say that Kamala won the debate, but they've taken the debate narrative a step further by suggesting that she's gotten a post-debate bump. Has she?
A new national poll tells us that last week’s presidential debate had little impact on voters, with only a small fraction saying it made them reconsider their support for either Harris or Trump. According to a Monmouth University poll released Tuesday, just 3% of those who tuned in said the event prompted them to rethink their choice.
"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," explains Fox News Digital. "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."
"How much this election is shifting is measured in inches rather than yards right now," observed Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray. "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."
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Some believe that pollsters are deceptively releasing polls showing a Kamala bounce from the debate. I don't want to believe that pollsters would manipulate their methodology or results to create that impression. However, if the aforementioned poll is accurate, the number of people the debate swayed is small, and there's no way that Kamala won over the entirety of that tiny fraction of voters either. In fact, a Reuters focus group showed that six undecided voters shifted toward Trump, compared to just three for Harris, which suggests that undecided voters may have largely shifted to Trump.
How is that possible? Sure, Trump didn't perform all that well, but Harris’s failure to offer concrete policies, especially on the economy and cost of living, hurt her with these key voters. Four of the six who shifted to Trump felt that Harris offered little beyond Biden’s policies, which they blame for rising costs. Other focus groups echoed this sentiment, and even independent voters aligned more with Republicans on issues like immigration and crime according to a Fox News focus group. Harris’s vague approach left undecided voters wanting more specifics, particularly about how she would deliver real change from the Biden-Harris administration.
So how could polls show a boost for Kamala if various focus groups found that Trump won over more independents than she did? It's a fair question, don't you think?
