Most pollsters, focus groups, and surveys have declared Vice President Kamala Harris the winner of the second presidential debate. However, the margin between her and her opponent, former President Donald Trump, remains narrow.
After the presidential debate, Donald Trump declared himself the winner of the event. «People are saying, BIG WIN tonight!» he exclaimed. The former president shared the results of a Newsmax poll on Facebook, which gave him a commanding 93% of the vote, while Vice President Kamala Harris received just 6%.
Trump also highlighted polls conducted on X (formerly Twitter), where he again claimed a significant lead over Harris. However, other surveys indicated the vice president had come out on top. PredictIt, a political prediction market, showed Trump’s odds slipping, with Harris gaining 3 cents and Trump dropping by 4 cents. By the end of the debate, the gap between the two candidates had widened to nearly 10 cents.
Post-debate odds show the gap widen slightly between @KamalaHarris and @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/HKujL6jLk7 pic.twitter.com/6qbcX0Byet
— PI (@PredictIt) September 11, 2024
The Trafalgar Group also named Harris as the winner, reporting that 55.3% of the 2,200 voters they surveyed believed she had won the debate, while Trump garnered 42.5% support. A small percentage, 2.2%, considered the debate a draw. In this poll, Harris led by 1.1%, and Trump improved by just 0.8%.
Another survey, conducted by SSRS for CNN, found that 63% of the 600 respondents felt Harris won the debate, while only 37% backed Trump. Additionally, a CNN focus group held in collaboration with Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, showed that 8 out of 13 undecided participants favored Harris over Trump by the end of the debate.
As a flash poll conducted by SSRS for #CNN shows, 63 percent of polled watchers of the September 10 presidential debate said that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala #Harris did a better job at arguing her policies and countering her opponent, former President Donald #Trump. pic.twitter.com/FvC5YYjP9o
— Statista (@StatistaCharts) September 11, 2024
A second focus group organized by The Washington Post found even stronger support for Harris, with 23 out of 25 participants saying she was the clear winner.
Before the debate, YouGov released a model based on 95,643 interviews with registered voters, showing Harris leading Trump 50% to 47%. The report also noted that the election could be decided by key battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska’s 2nd District.
