A new poll finds that more than seven in 10 voters have already decided who they will vote for in November’s presidential election.
A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Monday found that 72% of respondents said they had already made up their mind, while 28% said they were still considering their choice — a slight change from a May survey in which 69% said they had made up their mind.
The poll also found that Trump voters are more likely to be confident in who they support, with 76% saying they’ve already made up their mind, compared with 68% of Biden supporters. That may come as further reassurance to Trump, who polls show he leads Biden by six points, 47% to 41%, in head-to-head contests, with 8% undecided.
The Biden campaign is trying to minimize the damage from what was widely seen as a disappointing or even disappointing performance by Biden in last week’s presidential debate, where he stumbled at times and struggled to provide clear statements on policy issues while answering questions from the moderator.
The poll found that a moderate number of people who watched or listened to the debate said that it helped them decide who to vote for (75%). Forty-three percent of respondents said they watched the entire debate, 28% said they watched parts of it or watched clips online, and 16% said they read or listened to commentary about the debate.
Republicans were most likely to say they watched all or part of the show (80%), followed by Democrats (70%) and independents (62%).
Trump’s advantage among decided voters is consistent with the breakdown by party affiliation when asked the same question: More Republicans in the poll said they were made up, 84%, than Democrats, 72%.
Independents were divided, with 58% saying they had already made up their mind and 42% saying they were still considering their choice.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll was conducted June 28-30 and surveyed 2,090 registered voters. It is a collaboration between the Harvard Center for the Study of American Politics and the Harris Poll.
This survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. Because it is a representative online sample, probability confidence intervals are not reported.
