Polls are beginning to come in following last week’s presidential debate between former President Trump and President Biden, and they show some signs that Trump’s support has increased since the debate.
Anticipation was high for both candidates, with Biden especially hoping to use the night to allay fears that he might not hold onto four more years in office, but Biden stumbled, struggled to articulate his policy positions and didn’t show the kind of energy many Democrats had hoped for.
Trump Many He made far more false statements throughout the debate than Biden, but appeared more competent and aware during the debate, despite the candidates being close in age.
As a result, most poll respondents said Trump won the debate, and his approval rating has risen since then, though less than a week after the debate, and the change has been more modest than some might expect.
“I’m not sure that the reaction after the debate is decided is that anyone will look at the outcome of the debate and say, ‘This is going to help the president’s approval ratings,'” said Scott Tranter, director of data science at Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). “I think the question is how much of a negative impact it will have.”
Biden was already slightly behind Trump at the time of the debate, and national polls have been somewhat mixed, with each candidate showing slight leads at times, but in about a half-dozen key battleground states that are likely to decide the election, Biden has at least a few points ahead of the incumbent president.
While the debate was a chance for Biden to reinvigorate himself and ease concerns about his ability to run for another term as president, his performance instead stoked fears among Democrats that he may not be able to beat Trump as he did four years ago.
Democrats are known for their tendency to panic when worrisome political developments occur, and the numbers released after the debate confirmed at least some of their fears.
President Biden and former President Trump participate in the CNN presidential debate at CNN Studios in Atlanta on June 27, 2024. (Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)
A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Tuesday showed Trump leading Biden by 3 points in a race that included third-party and independent candidates. The two were tied in a previous poll in May. A majority of respondents said Trump won the debates and about a third said the debates made them more likely to vote for Trump, while just 10% said the debates made them more likely to support Biden.
The poll also found that a majority of Democrats want to ditch Biden and back another candidate they see as more likely to beat Trump. The CNN poll, released on Tuesday,foundSeventy-five percent of registered voters said the Democratic Party had a better chance of winning with a candidate other than Biden, including 56% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. The survey also showed that Vice President Harris, rumored to be the leading candidate to replace Biden if Biden leaves office, performed better against Trump than Biden. Despite never having run a presidential campaign, Harris beat Trump by just two points and Biden by six points.
Perhaps even more concerning is a poll released yesterday in a state Republicans are hoping to flip in November.
A poll from Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire showed Trump leading Biden by two points, 44% to 42%, and New Hampshire has long leaned Democratic in national elections, even though the state is often decided by single digits.
The result is a stark change from a December survey conducted by the same pollster, which showed Biden leading Trump by 10 points. While this is just one poll and the result is within the margin of error, the fact that New Hampshire is at stake will be a concern for Democrats who want to focus on states that recently seemed dead close.
“Fundamentally, structurally, this is a Democratic state,” Tranter said. “If the polls change, Joe Biden could still win the state, but that’s not a good trend. Even if the state is competitive and Joe Biden wins by a point or two. [points]That means other states like Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are probably more competitive because these factors are correlated.”
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Meanwhile, at least so far, Biden’s approval rating hasn’t plummeted: While Trump has extended or maintained his lead in several published polls, Biden’s approval rating has not collapsed.
A Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll released on Monday showed Trump with a 47% approval rating and Biden with 41% approval rating, maintaining a 6-point lead. Approval for both candidates has dropped by 2 points since the last poll in May.
When pollsters asked respondents about their party preferences, including independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Mr. Trump’s lead over Mr. Biden remained roughly steady.
One explanation is that the sharp political divisions in the country and the fact that Trump and Biden are very well-known figures mean that a significant proportion of voters have already decided who they will support in November.
A Harvard-Harris Poll found that 72% of respondents said they had already decided who they would vote for, up three percentage points from 69% in a May survey.
“This is a pretty stable electorate,” Tranter said. “President Biden has a core base of support, and that core base of support is people who would never vote for Trump, and the same is true for Donald Trump.”
But Tranter said that means smaller changes can have a significant impact on the election outcome. He considered a change of 4 points or more to be a “big move beyond the margins,” adding that that’s what people should pay more attention to than a 10-point shift.
Still, the national polling average has yet to change since the debate, based on the seven polls DDHQ considers in calculating its average, with Trump leading by about a point both before and after the debate.
DDHQ made only a few relatively small adjustments to its calculations of each candidate’s chances of winning nationally and in key states: Maine and New Hampshire leaned 3 percentage points toward Trump, with Maine in the swing state and New Hampshire leaning toward Biden but just outside the swing state.
Most of the changes, if any, would tip the scales in Trump’s favor by just a single point, but this year, small margins could be key. Polls often shift only temporarily even when there are bigger developments in political races, but the longer-term impact of the debates will need time to be assessed.
Tranter said he would need to see five or six more national polls released in the next week to 10 days to get a better sense of the debate’s impact, and he would also like to see one or two polls per battleground state, possibly in the coming weeks.
“Donald Trump certainly proved he can bounce back after a week of bad news. Let’s see if Joe Biden has that same magic,” he said.
