Republican voters are more likely to tune in to watch the presidential debate between President Biden and former President Trump on Thursday, a polling firm said. New Research.
A Syracuse University/Ipsos poll released this week found that 45% of Republicans said they would “very much” watch a televised debate between the two candidates, compared with 30% of Democrats who said they would “very much” watch the debate.
Overall, 61% of Americans said they were “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to watch the debate, according to the survey.
Biden and Trump are set to face off on Thursday night in the first presidential debate of the season, hosted by CNN and moderated by hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. It will be the first time the two have gone head-to-head since the 2020 election.
The former president faced criticism over his performance in a debate with Biden four years ago, acknowledging at the time that he “interrupted” Biden “too much,” as New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman pointed out last week.
“He’s told people many times that he knew he interrupted too often in the first debate with Biden in 2020, and I just rewatched the debate recently, and it’s really shocking,” Haberman said, adding, “We all talked about it at the time, and Biden barely got a word in, and Biden was smiling throughout the entire debate.”
Asked about the state of democracy in the country and which candidate they see as the greater threat, respondents were more likely to choose Trump over Biden, 49 percent to 34 percent, but this figure skewed heavily along party lines.
The survey found that Republicans were more likely to say Biden is a greater threat to democracy than the former president, and vice versa, and independents also said they see Trump as a greater threat than the current president (52 percent to 32 percent).
Fewer than half of respondents, 47 percent, also said the country would survive no matter who was elected, but they acknowledged that its “reputation and economy” could suffer if the wrong leader was elected, according to the poll.
According to the survey, 59% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats said the statement closely matched their views.
CNN’s presidential debate, which will also be simulcast on other major networks including ABC News, NBC News and CBS News, will take place in Atlanta at 9 pm EDT.
Another poll released earlier this week by The Associated Press-NORC Public Policy Center found that 64 percent of respondents said they would watch at least some of the debate.
The Syracuse University/Ipsos poll was conducted May 17-19 and included a sample of 1,017 adults with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
