In light of Joe Biden getting pushed out of the race after his disastrous June debate performance, the age-old question of ‘Do debates actually matter?’ seems to now have an affirmative answer.
Instead the more pertinent question is what effect last week’s debate will have on the race, and some post-debate polls are already shedding some light on this.
So far, the post-debate scientific surveys are clear: a clear majority of the nation’s 67 million debate watchers felt Vice President Harris won the debate.
A CNN snap poll found 63% of respondents thought Harris won, while just 37% felt Donald Trump was the victor. The margin in this survey was roughly comparable to other recent debates that moved the needle, including last summer’s Biden-Trump contest.
Among the other national polls that asked respondents who won the debate were: Morning Consult (Harris 61% Trump 33%), ABC News/Ipsos (Harris 58% Trump 36%), Yahoo/YouGov (Harris 56% Trump 26%), Reuters/Ipsos (Harris 53% Trump 24%), Leger/New York Post (Harris 50% Trump 29%) and Times/YouGov (Harris 55% Trump 25%).
While it’s still early, all those pollsters and several others saw a noticeable gain for Harris nationally. Our Decision Desk HQ/The Hill national average, for instance, saw Harris’ lead grow from 3.3% to 3.7%. For FiveThirtyEight, her advantage went from 2.5% to 3.3%, while Harris’ lead with RealClearPolitics rose from 1.1% to 2.0%.
Our first high-quality state survey came last Sunday, not from a swing state, but rather the former swing state of Iowa. The widely-respected Des Moines Register/Selzer poll found Trump ahead by four points, 47% to 43%. That’s a massive shift from their June 17th results, which had Trump leading Biden by eighteen, 50% to 32%.
Speaking of the swing states, we’ve witnessed some subtle shifts there over the past few weeks which we really should dive into.
As I’ve noted, the Harris campaign is sticking by the Biden Blue Wall plan of holding Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as their surest path to 270 electoral votes. Meanwhile, the Trump team’s top strategy is to win the three East Coast states: Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Given the Keystone State’s importance, it’s not surprising that Harris decided to prepare for the Philadelphia debate by holding her prep sessions across the Commonwealth in Pittsburgh. The Vice President then made a pair of appearances in Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre, before sitting down for her first post-nomination 1-on-1 interview with Philadelphia’s top-rated affiliate. She’ll follow this up with another stop in Philly for a NABJ event next week.
On Monday night, we finally got a post-debate survey of the Keystone State from USA Today and Suffolk that put Harris ahead by three points, 49% to 46%. One unique aspect of this survey was that they provided results from Erie and Northampton Counties, PA’s pair of Obama-Trump-Biden counties. The VP was ahead by four and five points respectively there, with a 35 point advantage among Latino voters in Northampton.
Meanwhile, a string of encouraging state polls have the Harris campaign closely eyeing the Tarheel State and its 16 electoral votes. According to Edward-Isaac Dovere of CNN, her team thinks she’s doing better there than in other contested states like Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. To that point, an estimated 17,000 showed up to Harris’ rally in Greensboro, her largest crowd of the campaign so far.
It’s not clear exactly why Harris would be running better in North Carolina than in 2020 Biden states like Arizona and Georgia. One possible culprit could be a reverse coattails phenomenon involving the Gubernatorial contest, where Democratic nominee Josh Stein holds a double-digit lead over controversial Republican nominee Mark Robinson.
Either way, North Carolina presents the Harris team with an intriguing back-up plan. Should they lose all-important Pennsylvania – but hold onto Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin – then North Carolina would still put the VP over the top.
To that point, Dovere also reports that “Michigan and Wisconsin are looking like the best of the bunch” of the swing states for Harris, an assessment in line with recent polls. Of course, these numbers are prompting speculation from experts who remember that these states were also the ones with the worst polling misses of the 2016 and 2020 elections.
That aforementioned Iowa poll, however, suggests that those surveys could indeed be accurate. After all, if Harris is narrowly trailing in Iowa then it would make sense that she’d be a few points ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin. In 2020 for instance, Trump won Iowa by 8.20% while Biden prevailed in Michigan and Wisconsin by 2.78% and 0.63% respectively.
Then on Wednesday, a trio of polls from Quinnipiac reframed the narratives yet again. They found Harris ahead by six (51% to 45%) in Pennsylvania — probably her best result yet in that likely tipping point state — and holding a five-point lead (50% to 45%) in Michigan too. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Harris was up by just one point (48% to 47%) over Trump.
Finally, we’ve yet to see much post-debate polling out of the Sun Belt, where we can test whether recent Trump momentum in Arizona and Georgia is fading or growing. Furthermore, while Harris has solidified her lead in this contest, those polling errors of 2016 and 2020 will continue to hang over this race until all the votes are ultimately counted.
For now, the best course of action is to keep watching the swing states and take note of the trends there.