The results of the first few surveys that dropped in after the presidential debate between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her rival Donald Trump have decisively skewed the victory odds in favor of one candidate.
The New Equation: Harris prevailed over Trump by a 47%-42% margin, giving her a neat five-point lead in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed Thursday. The pollster noted that this was an improvement from the four-point lead she had in the previous Aug. 21-28 survey.
The two-day poll surveyed 1,690 U.S. adults nationwide, including 1,405 registered voters, and had a margin of error of around three percentage points for registered voters.
Among the respondents who said they heard at least part of late Tuesday’s debate proceedings, 53% named Harris as the winner and 24% said Trump won. The rest either said neither won or chose not to answer the question. 52% said Trump stumbled and did not appear sharp, while a more modest 21% said the same about Harris.
One in five of the Republicans said Trump did not appear sharp.
Harris had an upper hand on voter perception regarding her moral integrity, with 52% picking the one who gave such an impression, while 29% said the same about her rival.
The vice president also had a better standing with respect to dignity, with 56% saying she appeared more dignified and 49% said she “seemed like someone who would listen to me and understand my concerns.”
Silver Updates Forecast: Veteran pollster Nate Silver’s updated forecast, aggregating the findings from nationwide polls, showed that Harris was ahead with 48.7% support, following the debate. Trump, with 46.8% support, trailed by 0.9 points.
Among the seven swing states, Harris was slightly ahead in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, and also Michigan and Wisconsin, and the two were tied in Nevada and North Carolina, while Trump was ahead in Arizona and Georgia.
The pollster, who founded analytics website FiveThirtyEight, said he would caution against reading too much into the data received so far, given it would take several days to conduct a traditional poll.
Silver’s polling model, which is dubbed as Silver Bulletin, adjusts for whether polls are conducted among registered or likely voters and house effects, which are systematic tendencies for polling firms to favor either the Democratic or Republican candidate, Silver said. His model weights more reliable polls more heavily and the results are not skewed by outliers, he added.
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