A quick survey conducted by CNN among registered Americans who watched Tuesday night’s presidential debate concludes that Vice President and Democratic candidate for the White House, Kamala Harris, surpassed former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump by a landslide.
According to the criteria of
Sixty-three percent of the 605 respondents nationwide polled by text message thought Harris performed better in the debate in Philadelphia, compared to 37 percent who thought Trump was the better of the two.
The candidates faced off in a heated debate that was filled with personal attacks and in which the Republican appeared exasperated on multiple occasions.
The meeting, organised by ABC News in Philadelphia, could be the only face-to-face meeting between the two less than two months before the November 5 elections, which will decide whether the Democrats manage to extend their political project or whether the country will face a second term for Trump.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris at the debate in Philadelphia.
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Personal attacks and false claims: this is how the meeting went
In the face to face, The New York tycoon exploded into diatribes riddled with falsehoods about immigration, the 2020 elections or abortion, Harris, meanwhile, remained calm, responding with expressive facial gestures to her opponent’s words and managing to evade questions about her weaknesses in front of voters.
The former president’s defensive attitude even caused “frustration” among some of his closest allies, according to leaks to US media, as his advisers had prepared him not to fall into Harris’s “traps” to upset him.
One of the moments where this deviation from the script was most evident was when he reacted to an attack by Harris, who said that her followers leave her rallies early because they find them “boring.”
They are eating dogs, they are eating cats and pets
Trump went on a monologue, echoing false information about Haitian migrants “causing chaos” in an Ohio town and kidnapping pets to eat them: “They are eating dogs, they are eating cats and pets,” he said, provoking laughter from his rival.
Personal attacks by both candidates also set the tone of the debate. Both Trump and Harris engaged in this debate strategy, accusing each other of being a “danger” to American democracy.
The vice president said she has spoken with military leaders who called Trump “a disgrace,” accused him of wanting to become a “dictator” and mocked the themes of his rallies.
Kamala Harris at the presidential debate in Philadelphia.
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The Republican, for his part, accused Harris of being a “radical” with a Marxist ideology, of “not having a plan” for the country and of wanting to lead the United States to ruin.
The Republican tried to steer the discussion back to the issue of migration management, which has become one of the priorities of Americans in the run-up to the elections.
Harris, for her part, dodged questions on the issue and limited herself to giving her support to a bill that seeks to make permanent the asylum restrictions that her government has imposed at the border.
She appeared energetic and brimming with a positive vision for the future. Trump ranted and railed against America as a nation in decline and seemed out of his depth.
Abortion was another issue that sparked a clash between the candidates, with Harris promising to protect abortion with a federal law. and Trump saying he believes in exceptions to abortion restrictions in cases of rape, incest and danger to the mother’s life.
The war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza and the 2020 elections were also issues that pitted the candidates against each other in the debate, where both presented themselves as the most sensible option for the country.
The Republican accused Harris of “hating Israel,” to which the Democrat responded by saying that she has spent her “career and her entire life supporting Israel and Israelis.”
Former US President Donald Trump at the presidential debate in Philadelphia.
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What do the polls say about the winner of the debate?
Before the debate, voters were evenly split on which candidate would perform better, CNN noted in its presentation of the poll results.
96 percent of Harris supporters who watched the debate said the vice president did a better job than the former presidentwhile among Trump supporters the percentage of those who consider him the winner is 69 percent.
The results of the snap poll mark a shift from the reaction to the June presidential debate, when registered voters who watched the verbal sparring between Trump and President Joe Biden, then the Democratic nominee for the Nov. 5 election, thought the former president outperformed his rival (67 percent to 33 percent).
CNN noted that the poll results reflect the views of the debate only among those who tuned in and are not representative of the views of the voting public at large.
According to CNN, voters who watched the debate also left with higher opinions of Harris.
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According to CNN, voters who watched the debate also came away with better opinions of Harris compared to their impressions before the debate, while few changed their views on Trump overall.
Forty-five percent of respondents said they view Harris favorably and 44 percent unfavorably, which is an improvement from before the debate, when she was viewed positively by just 39 percent.
Meanwhile, debate watchers’ views of Trump changed little: 39 percent rated him favorably and 51 percent unfavorably after the debate, similar percentages to the same voters before he took the stage.
The media has also claimed that Harris had a better debate than the former Republican president. CNN, for example, claimed that from the beginning, when the vice president approached Trump’s lectern to shake his hand, it was she who dictated the terms of the meeting.
Donald Trump after the presidential debate in Philadelphia.
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“She was energetic and brimming with a positive vision for the future. Trump ranted and raved about America as a nation in decline and seemed out of sorts. The vice president, who has sometimes struggled in spontaneous situations, gave the most commanding performance of her political career. Trump, who had entered the debate predicting he would test boxing champion Mike Tyson’s maxim, was stunned by the multiple blows and returned few in return,” the network said.
ABC News, the network that hosted the debate, said Harris repeatedly attacked and provoked Trump, while the former president resorted to conspiracy theories and false claims.
“Trump started off strong, but he couldn’t help but fall into the temptation of doing things he should have let slide. With that tie, the balance will likely tip in favor of the new candidate: Harris,” a Republican strategist told ABC.
Political scientist Larry Sabato also said that “Trump did very poorly and Harris won by a wide margin.”
“This may not move the polls much,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University, who are currently very close with eight weeks to go before the election. “But she pushed him into the kind of speech that illustrates the chaos he brought to the political scene.”
*With AFP and Efe
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