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With eight days left before Election Day, is there anything that can shift the state of the presidential race? The polls have been remarkably consistent, giving Joe Biden a solid lead over Donald Trump ever since the end of the Democratic primary campaign. Below, we’ll pull together polling conducted immediately after each of the presidential debates to examine how potential voters’ opinions changed—or didn’t—from the first to the last debate.
This week’s polling highlights:
“There are only five states in the U.S. where voters younger than 35 embrace President Trump over Joe Biden, and none are swing states, according to new 50-state SurveyMonkey-Tableau data for Axios.” by Margaret Talev for Axios (link)
“Just over half — 53 percent — of those who lost jobs during the coronavirus crisis have returned to work, according to a survey conducted this month for The New York Times by the online research firm SurveyMonkey.” by Ben Casselman for The New York Times (link)
“A majority of Americans say they don’t trust what President Trump has said about his health since testing positive for Covid-19 earlier this month, according to new data from the NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Tracking poll.” by Melissa Holzberg and Ben Kamisar for NBC News (link)
Debate reactions
The debates are some of only the handful of opportunities that any candidate in any presidential race has to reach millions of potential voters at once—and this year, with fewer in-person events possible because of the coronavirus, they became an even more central messaging opportunity for the Biden and Trump campaigns.
In the hours immediately following both presidential debates, SurveyMonkey polled more than 2,000 people who either watched or followed debate coverage. (Read more about these polls in Axios here and here.) As part of those polls, we asked respondents to provide their reactions in their own words. Here’s what they said:
1. Everyone agrees: the first debate was a disaster.
Democrats, Republicans, and independents all characterized the first debate with words like chaotic/chaos, embarrassing, ridiculous, terrible, and so on.
With that as a baseline, reviews of the second debate could only improve! It’s a strange world when words like informative, average, predictable, normal, civil, and boring can be viewed as positives, but that’s where we’re at in 2020.
2. Democrats’ views of Biden are unwavering.
Biden entered the race as a well-known entity, and throughout the campaign he sought more often to remind people of who he is at his core than to try to adapt himself to the changing whims of 2020. Some aspects of his more than forty years of public service turned out to be a distraction from if not totally detrimental to his campaign, as when he came under criticism for drafting the 1994 Crime Bill. But his consistent portrayal helped to solidify views of the candidate among Democrats, setting him up as a foil to President Trump in terms of his character as well as his political views.
Presidential was the word used most often by Democrats when describing Joe Biden’s debate performance—both times. Professional, calm, and strong were also cited verbatim after both nights’ debates, and in general Democrats used consistent language to characterize their nominee.
3. Republicans see Trump as strong, with different connotations from the first debate to the last
Republicans were not too pleased with Trump after the first debate; more than half (57%) said the main emotion they felt after the debate was “disappointment.” The word they used most often to sum up his performance was strong, but they also used words like aggressive, bully, childish, defensive, rude, combative, and impatient.
Things improved significantly with the last debate, when strong was once again the most cited word to describe Trump’s performance among Republicans, but it was in much better company: presidential, confident, excellent, controlled, leader, etc.
4. Neither candidate managed to change how he is seen by members of the opposite party.
Politics is about persuasion: convincing people to choose you rather than your opponent. Neither Biden nor Trump made much headway in persuading members of the opposite party after either debate. Democrats characterized Trump much the same way after the last debate as after the first: as childish, rude, embarrassing, a bully, and a liar.
Republicans’ views of Biden were if anything even more entrenched. Weak, poor, confused, and liar were the top mentioned words after both nights of the debate.
What we’re watching:
The Breakthrough, a project from CNN, SSRS, and researchers from Georgetown University and the University of Michigan, also uses respondents’ own words to track changes in the campaign over time.
That’s it for this week—thanks for reading! Hit reply to send us any questions or feedback.
Laura Wronski
“We have a two party system! That means it’s 50/50 for the blame of what’s happened to our country” But it seams Democrats are fast to point fingers at Republicans but refuse to take any blame!!!!!!!
When I can get on C-Span’s Washington Journal “my comment is”
So let’s see, we have Pres. Obama, his US, Canada, Russia “Uranium Scandal” “ Fast & Ferrous” selling Military Grade Weapons to Mexico’s Drug Cartel, and only retrieving “700" out of over 2'000 being sold.
Then we have Vice Pres. Biden flying his son to Ukraine, his son all of sudden gets slam dunked into the CEO of an Energy Company in Ukraine! Ukraine higher an investigator, Ukraine is forced to fire the “INVESTIGATOR”.
So the $64'000.00 question is if it would have been Vice. President Trump and his son! And Pres. Biden investigating Vice Pres Trump??? would the democrat party have IMPEACHED “BIDEN”?????
Then of course we have a debate over ( SECOND AMENDMENT) “THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” gee! That was back in the Black Powder/ Cap and Ball era!!!! Da! and as teach knowledge advance’s so do our right’s !!!!
So! My “FIRST REQUEST” to Washington journal is if we could get a conservative and a liberal law professors of law together and discus “The Broad Range of (THE DEFINITION OF ) a (DOMESTIC ENEMY) to a country!!!!!!
So! My “SECOND REQUEST” to Washington journal is if we could get a conservative and a liberal law professors of law together and discus “ THE TREATY BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND UKRAINE” singed by Pres. Bill Clinton. (Did Pres. Trump have the right to investigate Biden)
I'm sure as to how Trump makes them look bad, despite the fact that hes one that fought for this country finds 1 that put us at war and did everything in his power to destroy us period with Trump. No war started, he opened up millions. Jobs, one doesn't which and you can look it up today. It's fact he still has under his administration. A 115000 employees Hired under his supervision. How does that look bad if you don't mind me asking