The Debate Had No Major Effect On Battleground State Polling

Ten days have passed since the first and only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, and the polling in battleground states has remained mostly unchanged, with neither candidate getting much of a bump.

Polling averages posted by RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight show that the two candidates are still neck-and-neck in the seven major battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. According to RCP, Harris leads Trump by one-tenth of a percent in the averages of battleground state polling and has seen a slight dip since the September 10 debate on ABC. Trump’s average, meanwhile, is the same as it was 10 days ago.

Trump has held onto his slight lead over Harris in Arizona in the days following the debate, while his lead over Harris in Georgia has increased to just over 1 point, per the RCP average. FiveThirtyEight’s polling average also shows Trump remaining in the lead in Georgia, but the candidates are tied in Arizona, with Trump seeing a small dip since the debate.

In Nevada, Harris’ average has gone down since the debate, according to RCP, but FiveThirtyEight’s average shows the vice president’s numbers in the state staying the same over the past week while Trump’s average has slightly dipped.

The best post-debate polls for Harris came from results in Michigan and Pennsylvania that showed the vice president leading Trump by five points in both states. A Quinnipiac poll of more than 900 likely voters in Michigan showed Harris leading 51% to 46%, while a Quinnipiac poll of more than 1,000 likely Pennsylvania voters put Harris ahead by the same margin.

The Quinnipiac results combined with other post-debate polls, however, only slightly moved the needle in Harris’ direction in the two blue wall states. The Democratic nominee’s overall average lead in Pennsylvania since the debate has increased by just over a point while her lead in Michigan has gone up by less than a point since the debate, per FiveThirtyEight.

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The debate was viewed by many as lacking in-depth policy discussions, and the ABC News moderators were slammed by conservatives for targeting Trump and favoring Harris in their real-time fact-checks. Trump told Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld on Wednesday night that his “only regret” from the debate was not “going after” moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis for their “wrong” fact-checks.

Overall, neither Trump’s nor Harris’ standing in the polling averages of RealClearPolitcs and FiveThirtyEight shows much movement since their face-off on September 10, and neither candidate holds a lead larger than 3 points in any of the battleground states. Trump continues to outperform his polling numbers in battleground states at this point in both 2016 and 2020. His current numbers are 4 points better than where he was polling against President Joe Biden at this point in 2020.

Statistician Nate Silver, who founded FiveThirtyEight but now runs his own polling forecast, said on Friday that the latest polling shows “more good than bad for Harris in state polls,” but he added that the race is still a “toss-up.”

“When you’re near 50/50, a 1-point shift in the polls = about 8% of win probability shift in November,” Silver wrote. “So easy to end up on either side of the line on any given day.”