Today's Edition
The New York Times News Service
Vice President Kamala Harris overwhelmingly impressed voters in her debate with former President Donald Trump, a new set of polls from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College found, but she has failed so far to seize a decisive advantage in the presidential campaign.
The race is deadlocked nationally. Yet in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania, Harris has a lead of 4 percentage points - a slight edge that is unchanged since early August. She has reassembled much of the core Democratic coalition in the state, winning the support of Black voters, younger voters and women there.
The vice president received far stronger reviews of her debate performance last week than did Trump, with 67% of U.S. likely voters saying she did well compared with 40% for him.
A majority of voters in every racial group, age bracket and education level, even white voters without a college degree, who are typically the former president’s most loyal demographic, gave her a positive review.
But even that was not enough to jostle a race that appears destined to become a battle of inches this fall, after a summer of tumult and upheaval.
Nationally, Trump and Harris are knotted at 47%. In Pennsylvania, Harris leads 50% to 46%. The surveys were conducted almost entirely before the second apparent assassination attempt against Trump on Sunday.
The first 2024 general election debate, between Trump and President Joe Biden in June, upended the race, with Democrats so thoroughly losing faith in Biden’s ability at age 81 to campaign and serve a second term that the party switched candidates.
The new polls show how quickly Democrats consolidated behind Harris and eliminated what had once appeared to be a daunting enthusiasm gap.
But Harris still has some critical vulnerabilities heading into the fall, most notably that far more voters see her as too liberal than view Trump as too conservative.
The share of voters who said they still wanted to learn more about Harris was nearly identical, both before and after the debate, suggesting that she might have missed an opportunity to address doubts or provide more details to the public.
"I wanted to see how she would answer questions at the debate, but I feel like she didn’t really answer any of the questions; she kind of just deflected,” said Tyler Slabaugh, 24, who works in medical sales and lives in Grand Haven, Michigan. He didn’t vote in 2020 but plans to support Trump this year. "I didn’t really get a good understanding of, like, what her plan was,” he said of Harris.
Concerns about the state of the economy remain widespread. In Pennsylvania, 77% of likely voters said the economy was poor or fair, with only 22% calling it excellent or good. That negative view held true even in key Democratic regions, including Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs.
Trump has his own challenges, including among the college-educated white voters who populate such suburbs. His support among that group has sunk to 36% both nationally and in Pennsylvania. In 2020, he won 42% of this group, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of verified 2020 voters.
"He continues to just fly off the rails and ramble, which, again, is not something that I look for in the leader of the free world,” said Paul Irwin-Dudek, 47, a nonprofit executive in Nutley, New Jersey, who is supporting Harris. "She was able to command the room,” he said of the debate.
The fact that Harris was stronger in Pennsylvania than she was nationally is surprising. It has been among the most contested states since 2016 and has generally trended more Republican than the nation has overall.
But in 2024, Democrats - first with Biden and now Harris - have shown relative strength with white voters, and the Pennsylvania electorate is whiter than the nation overall.
Harris was winning 46% of white voters in Pennsylvania in the new set of polls. In 2020, Biden won 43% of white voters nationally; Hillary Clinton received just 39% support from the group in 2016.
The new polls are in line with other surveys, which show Harris’ favorability rating rising in the state. Only 42% of voters had rated her favourably in Pennsylvania in early July; now that figure stands at 51% - a remarkable improvement. Pennsylvanians have been bombarded by heavy advertising both for and against Harris since her entrance into the race on July 21.
Views of Trump have also brightened, with 47% seeing him favourably nationally. That is higher than earlier this year, even when he was leading Biden.
A similar share - 48% - have a favourable view of Harris nationally.
The debate was viewed live by more than 67 million Americans, making it the year’s most-watched broadcast outside of the Super Bowl. Harris fared strongest among the 80% of voters who said they had either watched that night or seen clips afterwards, winning among those voters. Trump was winning a majority of the far smaller share who had either only heard about the debate or had not heard anything about it at all.
The two candidates laid out widely divergent visions. However, the durability of the policy divide in America was clear in the poll.
The share of voters who favour Trump on the economy (54%) and immigration (54%) was within a percentage point of where it had stood before the debate.
"I really don’t feel like she did anything with the border when she was a vice president, I felt like it was a laughing joke,” said Mitchell Wallace, 33, a wastewater technician in Englewood, Florida. He is an independent who voted for Trump in 2020 and plans to do so again.
The shares of voters who trust Harris more on abortion (also 54%) and preserving democracy (50%) were unchanged after the debate, too.
Black voters were the most enthusiastic about Harris’ debate performance, with 87% saying she had done well - a higher percentage than the share of Black voters who said they were voting for her.
Among crucial independent voters, Trump’s debate was received poorly, with only 8% nationally and 4% in Pennsylvania saying he did very well. In the state, 65% of independent voters said Harris did well, compared with 30% who said the same of Trump.
