Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest moments in a 2024 election that is a sudden bonanza for Pennsylvania pollsters.
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The big moment
The first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign was perhaps the most consequential in modern history, given that it provoked President Joe Biden’s ultimate withdrawal. And Democrats came out of the Sept. 10 debate hoping that was the case again, albeit in the opposite direction.
There is no question that Vice President Kamala Harris won the debate going away. But given even that first debate didn’t move the polls much right away, it was fair to ask what the true, measurable impact of the second one would be.
Well, we’ve finally got a bunch of new data to dive into — including a Washington Post poll of Pennsylvania that’s part of a blitz of new polls in that state. So let’s examine, with an assist from the ever-bookmarkable Post polling averages.
1. Harris has gained. Somewhat. In some polls.
If Democrats were hoping the race would suddenly lurch in her direction like it did in the weeks after she jumped into the race, they’ll be disappointed. The shifts are almost all well within the margin of error, and some polls show no shift at all.
Harris gained four points from the previous margins in an Economist-YouGov poll and a Yahoo-YouGov poll, three points in a national Fox News poll and Quinnipiac University poll of all-important Pennsylvania, and two points in a national New York Times-Philadelphia Inquirer-Siena College poll.
Quinnipiac and a new Marist College poll also show Harris leading Donald Trump by five in Michigan, tying her best high-quality surveys to date there. (We don’t have earlier polls from the same pollsters to directly compare.)
But meanwhile, Monmouth University, Reuters-Ipsos and ABC-Ipsos national polls all showed a one-point shift or less, as did the Times-Inquirer-Siena poll in Pennsylvania that showed Harris’s lead holding at four. And even Harris’s good Pennsylvania polls were tempered by others showing a closer race, including from The Post (Harris up one) and Marist College (tied). Many of the polls in which Harris gained tend to be some of the more favorable ones for Democrats.
“This isn’t malicious in any way; it’s a product of the decisions they make to create their poll,” Lenny Bronner, who runs The Post’s polling averages, told me. “But what it means is that our polling model will discount Harris’s gains in those polls a bit.”
All told, Harris has either maintained her standing or gained a little ground in virtually all of the post-debate polls. So the faceoff appears to have been a net-positive for her — though far from a game changer.
2. Harris gained more in other ways
All of which reinforces something I’ve been saying for a long time: that this is just a hard race to shake up. We’re that polarized. Not only didn’t the first debate shift things instantly, but neither did Trump’s criminal conviction.
But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been significant shifts in other ways, beyond the horse race. And after the debate, Harris saw other encouraging signs.
Even in some status-quo polls, for instance, her image improved. The ABC-Ipsos poll showed Harris’s lead holding at six points, but it also showed voters said by double-digits that the debate improved their views of her and worsened their views of Trump.
Other polls like The Post’s showed Harris with more of an image advantage than the head-to-head numbers suggest. The Post poll showed Harris up just one point, for instance, but Pennsylvanians liked her by a three-point margin and disliked Trump by six points. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of Georgia also showed Harris as more popular than Trump, despite her three-point deficit in that state.
A YouGov poll showed Harris gained and Trump lost ground on several personal characteristics, including charisma, being calm under pressure, speaking coherently and being persuasive — even as voters didn’t move much on which candidate was better on specific issues. Another YouGov poll showed her gaining eight points on the margin when it came to whether she was qualified to be president.
And a new AP-NORC poll Thursday showed registered voters said by six points (47-41) that Harris would make a good president — even as they said by 23 points that Trump would not. That’s a bigger gap than in late July.
The polls also suggest that the debate, at the very least, gave pause to more right-leaning voters. Both the Monmouth poll and an instant post-debate CNN poll showed more of Trump’s base saying the debate at least caused them to reconsider their vote.
In other words, few voters appear to have changed their minds. But the debate appears to have made Harris more appealing and Trump somewhat less appealing, which could impact how voters assess their options moving forward.
“How much this election is shifting is measured in inches rather than yards right now,” Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray said. “We are basically at the point where turning out 10,000 extra voters in a key swing state could determine the outcome. Polling tells us the broad contours of the race but it cannot measure these types of micro shifts.”
3. Harris’s path could be solidifying
The Michigan and Pennsylvania polls might be the most encouraging for Harris. That’s because those states are so vital to her most apparent path to victory — through the North — and they suggest she’s solidified her leads in them.
The batch of new polls in Pennsylvania, for instance, shows Harris: tied, up one, up three, up three, up four and up six.
The current Washington Post polling averages show she leads by two points in Michigan and Pennsylvania. She also leads by three in Wisconsin, despite the new Quinnipiac, AARP and Marist polls each showing her leading by one.
All three states remain very competitive. But if Harris can win them, she’s probably at 270 electoral votes already.
And to date, she’s trailed in just two out of more than two dozen qualifying head-to-head polls across those three states. Both of them showed one-point Harris deficits.
A telling moment on Trump’s Haitian migrants misinfo
It’s been evident for some time that Trump’s and JD Vance’s elevation of baseless rumors about Haitian migrants stealing and eating pets was a rather shameless political ploy; Vance has all but acknowledged as much. Politicians are known for deliberately misleading for political effect, but by any standard this has been jarringly cynical.
And the true scope of the cynicism and disregard for the truth came into sharp focus in a must-read Wall Street Journal story published Wednesday.
The key new details:
The day Vance first surfaced the claim on Sept. 9, his office actually reached out to Springfield’s city manager to check on its veracity. City Manager Bryan Heck says he responded that it was baseless, but Vance didn’t remove his X post, and the next day both Vance and Trump (at the debate) doubled down.
Pressed for something to substantiate Vance’s continued claims, a Vance spokesperson shared a police report of a woman who told police her cat might have been taken by Haitians in late August. But the Journal soon interviewed the woman, who said the cat had been found in her basement a few days later — long before Vance made the claim. The woman said she had made a point to apologize to her Haitian neighbors.
The details reinforce how disdainful Vance and the Trump campaign have been of the truth here. We’ve known for a while these were thinly sourced rumors; now we learn they were told that directly, early on. And even the supposed evidence they’re now citing falls apart with some routine reporting.
Driving home that point: Vance was pressed Wednesday on calling the Haitian immigrants “illegal,” despite them having been granted temporary legal status (Trump has even said he would deport them). Vance said he would keep calling them “illegal aliens.”
A momentous stat
58-31
That’s the margin by which members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union said they supported endorsing Trump over Harris, according to an internal poll. But the Teamsters opted not to endorse either candidate Wednesday.
In a way, that’ll be disappointing for the Trump campaign — given that margin and given that Republicans gave Teamsters President Sean O’Brien a prime speaking role at their convention in July. Trump’s lead among members was also a sharp reversal from when Biden was in the race and they backed him over Trump, 44 to 36 percent.
But the Teamsters have also endorsed Democrats in every presidential election since 2000 (the last time the union didn’t endorse was 1996). So even the lack of an endorsement is a statement in Trump’s long-running efforts to make headway with unions.
Take a moment to read:
“How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants — After Being Told They Weren’t True” (Wall Street Journal)
“Scarred by violence, lawmakers plan for possible ‘mass casualty’ event” (Washington Post)
“Swift’s endorsement of Harris spotlights young voters. They are not a monolith.” (Washington Post)
“Trump campaign courts younger men to make up losses with women voters” (Washington Post)
“The staggering reach of Trump’s misinformation — not just on Haitian migrants” (Washington Post)
“Something odd happened: There’s a candidate Americans (sort of) like” (Washington Post)
“What R.F.K. Jr.’s Alliance With Trump Could Mean for Public Health” (New York Times)