Polls after the debate show that little has changed in the presidential campaign, Harris is narrowly ahead

Recent polls show that the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump did not significantly change the course of the 2024 presidential campaign.

According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday and conducted in the days following last week’s debate, Harris is supported by about 51 percent of registered voters surveyed, compared to 47 percent for Trump, the same four percentage point difference as in pre-debate polls.

This despite the fact that, according to pollsters, most people assumed that Harris would have come out on top in the first – and apparently only – face-to-face meeting between the two.

“Americans overwhelmingly chose Kamala Harris as the winner of last week’s highly-watched presidential debate – but neither she nor Donald Trump made any difference in terms of trust in the issues, assessments of the candidates’ personal qualities, or their voting preferences in the 2024 election,” the pollsters wrote.

While Harris’ apparent victory may not have been anything special, it still represents a reversal of Democrats’ fortunes in late June, when President Joe Biden effectively ended his presidential campaign with a disastrous debate performance.

“58-36 percent say Harris won the debate,” pollsters said. In comparison, this summer, “66-28 percent said Trump was the winner.”

These pollsters surveyed 2,772 registered voters, and their results are consistent with a similar poll conducted by YouGov for the Sunday Times of 1,407 American adults, which found: “Harris was the clear winner of the debate, but her narrow lead over Trump was the same after the debate as it was before it.”

A Morning Consult poll of 3,317 likely voters showed stable support for Harris after the vote, while Trump slipped slightly.

“Our one-day poll of 3,317 likely voters conducted Wednesday found the Democratic nominee leading her Republican opponent 50% to 45%. The 5 percentage point lead represents a slight improvement over her 3 and 4 percentage point leads in our pre-debate polls, though the shift was within the polls’ margin of error,” they wrote.

These pollsters say it’s hard to say whether Harris’s gains from Trump’s loss were due to the debate or a lack of momentum.

“It’s too early to say whether Harris’ debate performance is the deciding factor in our latest head-to-head numbers, as our short-term trends suggest she was already gaining momentum ahead of Tuesday’s televised debate,” they wrote.