Voters aren’t any more likely to back Kamala Harris even if they think she won last week’s debate, a new ABC poll shows.
The latest ABC News/Ipsos survey, conducted after the Democratic presidential nominee’s TV matchup against GOP foe Donald Trump on Sept. 10, shows that 58% said Harris trumped Trump during the showdown, compared to 36% who picked the former president as the winner.
But the poll also has Harris ahead in the race still by a margin of 52% to 46% among likely voters — identical to her margin with that bloc back in August.
The new survey showed only slight variations when considering all of the respondents, with Harris, 59, coming out ahead 51% to 46% compared to 50% to 46% in August, and among solely registered voters, which had 51% for her compared to 47% for Trump, 78, this time around, relative to 50% to 46% in August.
The debate, which was hosted by ABC News, was a sharp reversal for Trump compared to his June verbal sparring with 81-year-old President Biden, with Trump seen as the winner of that match 66% to 28%. Biden eventually bowed out of the race over his dismal showing.
When breaking down last week’s debate along party lines, 95% of Democrats believed Harris emerged victorious, compared to 75% of Republicans who felt that way about Trump.
Among Trump’s supporters, 78% dubbed him the winner, compared to 97% of Harris’ backers who deemed her the victor.
A firm 69% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents contended that the debate helped them see Harris more positively, while 34% of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents said the same about Trump’s performance.
During the verbal bout, Harris worked to get under Trump’s skin and bait him with jabs about his crowd sizes, as well as the indictments he’s faced.
Trump and his allies later railed against ABC News, blasting the debate’s moderators for intervening and conducting fact-checks against him but not doing the same for Harris.
The 45th president has ruled out another debate, fashioning himself the winner of the Sept. 10 one. He has also highlighted polls that pegged him as the debate winner.
“When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are ‘I WANT A REMATCH,’” Trump chided on Truth Social last week before declaring “NO THIRD DEBATE.”
There is still one more major political debate scheduled this election cycle — an Oct. 1 showdown between GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, hosted by CBS News.
In the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polling, Harris has garnered a 1.9 percentage point edge over Trump in a multi-candidate match-up, where hopefuls Chase Oliver, Jill Stein and Cornel West notch no more than 1% each.
On debate night, another potential big development was that afterward, pop star Taylor Swift fulfilled some of Harris backers’ wildest dreams by endorsing the veep for president.
But most voters appeared to be shaking off Swift’s stamp of approval, with only 6% indicating that her endorsement makes them more likely to back Harris in the election, 13% saying it makes them less likely and 81% no difference.
Similar to other polls, in the latest survey, Harris scored a 9-point lead over Trump with likely female voters, 55% to 44%, while the pair were dead even among likely male voters at 49% apiece.
Likely black voters opted for Harris over Trump 89% to 9%, as did likely Hispanic voters, 58% to 41%. Young likely voters ages 18 to 29 did the same 59% to 40%.
Those figures mark a stronger showing for Trump among Hispanic voters than is typical, as he had been trounced by Hillary Clinton with that bloc in 2016 by 40 points and beaten President Biden in 2020 by 33 points.
On the issues, Trump scored a roughly 7-point advantage over the economy as well as inflation and a 10-point lead on immigration, while Harris nabbed a 7-point advantage on safeguarding democracy, a 9-point edge on health care and a 14-point lead on abortion.
The ABC News/Ipsos survey sampled 3,276 adults and 2,196 likely voters — evenly divided between Dems, Republicans and Independents — and each group with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, between Sept. 11 and 13.
Strikingly, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll that dropped Sunday showed Harris winnowing Trump’s lead in the Hawkeye State to 4 percentage points, with the former president up 47% to 43%.
That’s a dramatic shift from June, when Trump toppled Biden in the poll there 50% to 32%. Trump dispatched Biden in Iowa by more than 8 points in the 2020 election.
