CNN
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Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s presidential debate widely agree that Kamala Harris performed better than Donald Trump, according to a new SSRS poll of CNN debate viewers. The vice president also exceeded viewers’ expectations from debates earlier this year and Joe Biden’s onstage performance against the former president, the survey found.
Debate viewers said Harris performed better onstage in Philadelphia by 63% to 37%. Before the debate, those same voters were evenly split on which candidate gave a stronger performance, 50% saying Harris and 50% saying Trump. After the debate, 96% of Harris supporters who watched the show said their candidate performed better, while a minority of Trump supporters, 69%, said Trump had the better night.
Voters who watched the debate also saw their views of Harris improve compared to their pre-debate impressions, but few saw an overall change in their opinion of Trump. Their views of each candidate’s issue strengths continue to mirror trends seen in national polls, with Trump leading on the economy, immigration and as commander in chief, and Harris being more trusted on abortion and protecting democracy.
While the majority of people who watched the debate said it did not affect their decision to run for president, among debate viewers, Trump supporters were more likely than Harris supporters to say the debate had made them reconsider.
The results of this early poll are a change from reactions to the June presidential debate, when voters who watched Trump and Biden face off said Trump outperformed his Democratic rival by 67% to 33%. The June debate was a rare presidential debate victory for Trump. In 2020 and 2016, debate viewers saw Biden and Hillary Clinton outperform Trump in the presidential debates.
The poll results reflect only the opinions of voters who watched the debate, and are not representative of the overall electorate. The poll found that debate viewers were 6 percentage points more likely to support Republicans than Democrats, and about 4 percentage points more likely to support Republicans than registered voters nationwide as a whole.
At the end of the debate, viewers reported being evenly split on Harris, with 45% viewing her favorably and 44% viewing her unfavorably — an improvement from the 39% who viewed her favorably before the debate. Meanwhile, viewers’ views of Trump remained largely unchanged, with 39% rating him favorably after the debate and 51% rating him unfavorably, roughly the same as those same voters had before the debate.
Among voters who watched the debate and identify as politically independent, Harris’ approval rating rose from just 30% before the debate to 48% after it.
Fifty-four percent of debate viewers said they have at least some confidence in Harris and Trump’s ability to lead their respective countries, while 36% said they had a lot of confidence in Trump and 32% said they had a lot of confidence in Harris. In June, only 14% of those who watched the Trump-Biden presidential debate said they had a lot of confidence in Biden’s leadership.
After the most recent debate, viewers were split on which candidate better understands the issues facing people like them, with 44% choosing Harris and 40% choosing Trump. This marks a shift in Harris’s favor from pre-debate, when 43% said Trump understood their issues better and 39% chose Harris. But after the debate on the economy, viewers gave Trump a 20-point advantage over Harris, 55% to 35%, slightly larger than Trump’s lead before the debate.
Debate viewers also rated Trump 23 points ahead of Harris on who they would trust to handle immigration and 6 points ahead on how she would handle her role as commander in chief, but 9 points ahead of Harris on protecting democracy and 21 points ahead on who they would trust to handle abortion.
Among voters who watched Tuesday’s debate, 82% said it had no impact on their choice of president. An additional 14% said they thought it over but didn’t change their mind, and 4% said it changed their mind about who they would vote for. Debate viewers who supported Trump before Tuesday night were more likely to say their views had wavered after the debate, 23% to 12%.
The CNN poll was conducted via text message among 605 U.S. voters who reported watching Tuesday’s debate, and the poll results are representative of the opinions of the debate viewers only. Respondents were recruited prior to the debate and were selected through a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results from the full sample of debate viewers have a sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.
CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.