Although pundits declared Vice President Kamala Harris the clear winner of Tuesday night’s debate, former President Trump won six of ten undecided voters in a Reuters focus group. Harris only won three. A New York Times survey of undecideds had similar results.
The debate, which was widely criticized for bias on the part of the ABC News moderators, was mostly seen as a draw between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. “These ‘moderators’ are complete hacks,” Michael Knowles posted on X. “It’s three on one, and Trump is still winning!”
Some political pundits predicted the debate would have little effect on the election. According to a Reuters sampling, however, six out of ten undecided voters said they were leaning towards Trump due to Harris’s “vague” answers and because they “trusted” Trump more on the economy, the top issue of the 2024 cycle.
Reuters reported:
Reuters interviewed 10 people who were still unsure how they were going to vote in the Nov. 5 election before they watched the debate. Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote.
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Five said they found Harris vague during the more than 90-minute debate on how she would improve the U.S. economy and deal with the high cost of living, a top concern for voters.
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Four of those six also said Harris did not convince them she would pursue different economic policies than Democratic President Joe Biden, a Democrat they largely blame for the high cost of living.
Six of the undecided voters were men, four were women, and all have previously voted for Democrat and Republican candidates.
“I felt like the whole debate was Kamala Harris telling me why not to vote for Donald Trump instead of why she’s the right candidate,” said Robert Wheeler, a security firm executive in Nevada who was leaning toward Harris before the debate.
“I still don’t know what she is for,” an entrepreneur from Florida, Mark Kadish, said. “There was no real meat and bones for her plans.”
Reuters’ report is supported by New York Times interviews of undecided voters following the debate. “Trump’s pitch was a little more convincing than hers,” Keilah Miller from Milwaukee, a previous Democrat voter, said. “I guess I’m leaning more on his facts than her vision.”
“When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better,” she said. “I’ve never been so down as in the past four years. It’s been so hard for me.”
Jason Henderson, a defense contractor from Arizona who voted for former President Barack Obama, said Harris did not meet his expectations.
“Trump had the more commanding presentation,” he told the Times. “There was nothing done by Harris that made me think she’s better. In any way.”
Sixty-one percent of likely voters believe the next president should represent a major change from the Biden-Harris administration, while only 25 percent said Harris represented that change, a Times/Siena College poll found Sunday. A majority said Trump represents the change.
Harris comes into the debate with a conundrum: She cannot campaign on policies to fix crime, inflation, and border security without undermining the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, but she must tout the administration’s policies to validate her record and candidacy.
Trump: Kamala Has Had 3.5 Years to Fix America’s Problems — “Why Hasn’t She Done It?”
The ABC News Presidential Debate
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
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