Did Harris win the debate or did Trump lose it?

In the hours following Kamala Harris’ first and possibly last face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump, political commentators and unofficial polls seemed to overwhelmingly declare her the winner of the evening.

A CNN poll found that debate viewers declared Harris the winner by a comfortable margin of 63 to 37. A YouGov poll found Harris winning among registered voters by 43 to 28. Even pundits on conservative television network Fox News agreed that she beat Trump.

Harris rattled Trump, provoking him with the size of his rallies, and both she and the moderators pushed back, promptly fact-checking some of his most extravagant claims. Although she didn’t offer much substance on some of the most pressing issues for voters – like immigration – she exuded a level of confidence that critics had previously accused her of lacking, and left the debate stage beaming while her opponent fumed.

And to top off the evening, Taylor Swift did her commercial.

Maybe none of this matters so much. Official post-debate polls of undecided voters have not yet been released and will take several days, but it’s not clear whether either candidate’s performance will change many minds.

But did Harris actually win, or did Trump simply fall apart, leaving her the winner?

Al Jazeera interviewed half a dozen experts on debate, political speech, psychology and communications. Some said she successfully exploited his weaknesses, while others noted that her strategy was aimed at unsettling him but did not tell voters more about her own policies. Still others questioned the value of political debate altogether, condemning a spectacle without substance or benefit for undecided voters.

She knew which buttons to presssch

“She won the debate and not without a fight,” Tomeka M. Robinson, professor of rhetoric and public advocacy at Hofstra University, told Al Jazeera.

Still, Robinson continued, Trump did himself no favors by not sticking to the issues.

“Trump should have talked more about his policy ideas instead of relying on the same dangerous rhetoric about immigrants and reproductive justice,” she said. “He was right to press Vice President Harris on the issue of tariffs and President Biden not to lift them. If he had stuck to his success on certain policy decisions, the debate could have gone differently.”

Tammy R. Vigil, a media professor at Boston University specializing in political communication, also stressed that while Harris is exploiting Trump’s weaknesses to her advantage, she fails to provide concrete details about her political plans.

“Harris won the debate because she knew exactly which buttons to push to help Trump express himself in a way that best reveals his character,” Vigil told Al Jazeera. “His content is very rarely based on facts and is often heavily geared towards eliciting emotional rather than rational reactions from viewers. That’s what he did last night.”

It did not seem to be Harris’ top priority to give clear answers about her policies.

“Harris has embraced the role of prosecutor during the campaign,” David A. Frank, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Oregon, told Al Jazeera. “Her strategy in the debate was to put Trump on trial,” he added.

Increasingly angry and incoherent

Some experts compared Trump’s behavior on Tuesday night to his last presidential debate this year – which ultimately led to President Biden’s withdrawal from the race after a disastrous performance.

“While Biden mostly brought about his own destruction in the first debate, Trump helped by sitting back, staying calm and largely sticking to his message,” Nick Beauchamp, a political scientist at Northeastern University who, among other things, models political debates, told Al Jazeera.

“In contrast, Harris’ constant jibes, jabs and minor insults in the Harris-Trump debate appear to have played a large role in Trump’s increasingly angry and incoherent tirades coming off badly,” he added. “So in that sense, Harris actively contributed to Trump’s loss, but more by actively causing Trump to behave badly than by actively presenting herself in the best light.”

Harris, on the other hand, did little to clearly define herself and her values. She passed up that opportunity in favor of an obviously deliberate attempt to unsettle Trump. “She hasn’t done much to define herself or her policies in a positive way,” Beauchamp said.

Nothing hurts him

While fact-checkers found plenty of criticism of Trump, some commentators cautioned against declaring Harris the winner, pointing out that the former president has long proven herself resistant to the kind of blunders and absurd claims that would end the careers of most other political candidates.

It is not easy to fairly evaluate a debate when one candidate seems immune to all expectations to tell the truth while the other is expected to meet conventional criteria, such as making clear policy statements, says Steven Fein, a psychology professor at Williams College who studies political debates.

Fein pointed to a long list of obvious falsehoods Trump announced on Tuesday – including statements about executing babies, migrants stealing and eating family pets, and Harris’ meeting with Vladimir Putin immediately before the invasion of Ukraine.

“Not only is this not a disqualification, it doesn’t hurt him either,” Fein said. “Undecideds say they don’t see any differences between the candidates because Harris hasn’t given any details about her policies. That’s like comparing apples to washing machines, let alone oranges.”

No real debate

If the debate had been scored like college competitions, a judge would have looked at the claims made by each contestant and supported by credible evidence, James M. Farrell, who teaches argumentation and rhetoric theory at the University of New Hampshire, told Al Jazeera.

On Tuesday, Farrell added, there were many dubious claims and little credible evidence, as well as too many “personal attacks, errors of reasoning, non sequiturs, circular reasoning and straw man misrepresentations from both candidates,” he added. “This made the debate an unpleasant experience for any voter seeking a civilized discussion about the problems facing our country and possible policy solutions.”

This may ultimately be the problem with presidential debates, which have increasingly become entertainment events rather than informative events designed to help voters make decisions.

“These appearances are not really debates at all,” said Farrell. “As a template for a rational and civilized exchange of different political views, this whole spectacle was miserable.”