63% of U.S. viewers thought Harris beat Trump in first debate

Sep 12, 2024, 08:06 am

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U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump faced off in a heated presidential debate hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia on September 10, 2024./ Source: AFP Yonhap

Washington correspondent Ha Man-joo

U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who pushed her Republic rival and former President Donald Trump hard in their first face-off, has emerged as the clear winner of the debate, according to a poll of debate watchers.

Shortly after the 95-minute debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the CNN poll was conducted with 605 registered US voters who said they watched the debate Tuesday. Debate watchers said, 63% to 37%, that Harris turned in a better performance onstage. Results for the full sample of debate watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

This is noteworthy because the results of the poll mark a shift from the reaction to the June presidential debate, when voters who watched the matchup between Trump and Biden said, 67% to 33%, that Trump outperformed his Democratic rival.

The two candidates held fierce discussions on the economy, immigration, abortion rights, and border issues. Harris took the lead in general, making Trump defensive, according to U.S. media outlets.

However, the U.S. daily New York Times (NYT) said that there seems to be no decisive blow to fundamentally change the dynamics of the ultra-close election in November despite several flash points.

The NYT analyzed that Harris tried to portray Trump as a friend of billionaires and large corporations who would erode the middle class, while Trump tried to define Harris as too liberal to lead the country and a figure with poor policies.

“That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement shortly after the debate. “We’ll look at it, but they want a second debate because they lost,” Trump told reporters when he visited the spin room after the debate.

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