Kamala Harris Sees No Gain in Polls After Debate

New polling confirms that Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) did not see any major boost as a result of her first debate with former President Donald Trump, despite claims from the mainstream media that she was the winner of the debate.

As the Daily Caller reports, the latest poll from ABC News and Ipsos saw that Harris only gained one percentage point in a general election matchup against President Trump, now at 51% to Trump’s 47%. This was despite 58% of respondents in the same poll saying that they believed Harris won the debate.

The poll was conducted online between September 11th and September 13th, with a sample size of 3,276 registered voters and a margin of error of 2%. In the same poll, Harris leads Trump among all adults with 51% to 46%, with her lead increasingly slightly among likely voters, with 52% to Trump’s 46%.

The survey reveals that the slight increase came from Harris’ own Democratic base. While the overall poll showed that 37% of voters viewed her more favorably after the debate, compared to 23% who viewed her less favorably, 69% of Democrats said they had a more favorable view of her. By contrast, 34% of Republicans found Trump more favorable after the debate.

Additional polling in the aftermath of the debate showed that, while most voters appeared to consider Harris the winner, her performance failed to connect with one key group: Independent voters.

Reuters conducted a focus group after the debate, consisting of 10 voters who were undecided before the debate. After it was over, six of the 10 said they would either vote for Trump or were leaning towards Trump; only three said they leaned towards Harris, while the last voter still remained undecided. Furthermore, ABC News, the host of the debate, tracked the responses of Democratic, Republican, and independent voters in real time during the debate, finding that independents overwhelmingly sided with Republicans whenever Trump spoke on the major issues.

As such, the general consensus is that, even if a majority believe Harris won the debate, it has not been enough to significantly change the trajectory of the polls, with less than two months left before the election. Statistician and pollster Nate Silver still gives President Trump the edge in likelihood to win the electoral college, with a 61% chance of winning to Harris’ 39%.