Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will Share the stage For the first time Tuesday night, voters get a look at the two major presidential candidates at once after a summer of almost unprecedented upheaval.
Trump appears to have begun to slow Harris’ rise, which began after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. She has slashed the former president’s fundraising numbers, held raucous rallies and, most importantly, cut into his poll lead. But a closely watched New York Times-Sienna poll on Sunday shows why, in many cases, Trump remains a slight favorite.
Voting in the majority Battleground states Show margins that are Too close to call. At this point in 2016, Trump was trailing Hillary Clinton. And in both that race and 2020, pollsters underestimated his support. Trump also has a strong hold in Pennsylvania, one of the most important battleground states in the election.
The debate gives both sides a chance to advance a razor-thin race. Harris will face her biggest audience since securing her historic nomination. Millions of Americans have historically seen this confrontation. More than 51 million Americans tuned into the June debate, the earliest ever, featuring a 2020 rematch that polls have long shown the nation fears. In both 2016 and 2020, only the Super Bowl received higher ratings.
“So it’s like the NFL and the country mile debates are the most watched things and so all these people are tuning in, and the research is sure that voters learn a lot from the debates and they leave the debates confident that they know. about campaigns to meaningfully participate in politics,” said Ben Warner, professor of political communication at the University of Missouri.
Warner said the ageless Washington parlor game of how important debates really are overshadows what he and other researchers have found: that everyday Americans rely on debates to inform their opinions about candidates.
“You might say, ‘Are they really learning the nuances of the policy differences between the candidates?'” Warning said. “I think it’s more important how they feel about the candidates as people, how they feel they know what the candidates stand for, and how they’re comfortable making an informed decision between the candidates.”
Trump will likely confront Harris about his changing views.
This would also be Harris’ most unscripted moment to date. Trump and his allies have tried unsuccessfully to get her to hold more news conferences. They also pointed out that there was no policy position on its website until then Sunday evening.
Matt Volking, who served as deputy communications director for Trump’s 2020 bid, tells Total Business Insider, “Kamala is in a complete bubble, she’s done half the interview and otherwise not faced any unscripted moments.”
Harris and his running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat for A Joint interview with CNN’s Dana BashBut outside of that appearance, the vice president has spoken little to the press. In comparison, Trump has held multiple news conferences and is trying to appeal to young men through lengthy interviews with podcast hosts. At the same time, Harris has abandoned many of her progressive views taken during her failed 2020 Democratic presidential primary run. Trump’s allies hope to call what they see a false flip-flop.
“She’s not really sure what she really believes, so she’s very vague about answering questions about policy, policy positions that she’s supported in the past and supposedly no longer support, ” Volking said. “I think she looks like a chameleon accepting two or three of Trump’s positions.”
She made her promise after Trump followed Harris Not for tax tipsA policy pushed by the powerful Culinary Union in Nevada. Harris also did not offer much explanation for his changing views. When Bash asked her about it, the vice president repeatedly declared that while some attitudes may have changed, “my values haven’t.”
The Democratic pollster warns Harris to be careful how she reacts.
Since replacing Biden, Harris’ team has adopted a more nuanced and trolling tone aimed at getting under Trump’s skin. Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith said Harris needs to make sure the lasting moment from the debate isn’t a one-liner, but an impression of what he will do in office.
“Voters are always, ten times out of ten, more interested in hearing Kamala Harris talk about what she’s going to do than anything else she plans to do, whether it’s a scathing rebuttal, or an attack on Donald Trump, or whatever. .get out of Kamala Harris’ mouth,” Roth Smith, lead pollster for the Reed Hoffman-backed Blueprint, told Business Insider.
A Roth Smith poll found that voters would prefer Harris to continue to state his views in “relatively broad terms.” He cautioned against getting too caught up in policy matters.
“It doesn’t matter who’s asking you whether it’s actors in good faith or actors in bad faith, it would be a mistake for Kamala Harris and Harris to be a policy white paper campaign instead of a 60-day campaign. A campaign of priorities, energy, directional focus,” Roth said. Smith. “They seem to understand that and I hope we see that in the debate.”
Harris herself has been dismissive of Trump’s personal attacks, but Democratic strategist Doug Sosnick says she will be watching very carefully how the former president handles her. Trump has a A long history attacking female foes in a particularly caustic manner, which underscored and amplified his struggle to appeal to women more broadly.
“I think it’s especially concerning in this election given how Trump has treated women in general and how Trump has treated black women in particular,” Sosnick said. “For me, that dynamic will be one of the most important to watch.”
Sosnick asserted that viewers may react differently to Trump’s actions compared to 2016 when he famously trailed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during their town hall debate. The candidates are required to stay behind their podiums during Tuesday’s debate, but that won’t stop Trump from throwing out lines like calling Clinton a “nasty woman,” which Democrats later called a badge of honor.
“In many ways the world is different now than it was eight years ago, including the behavior he displayed in 2016. I think he can get away with a lot more than now in terms of offending people, some men but for sure women voters. ,” Sosnick said.
The race is so close that even a small bump after the debate can be huge.
Tuesday’s debate will be the first time Harris and Trump will be in the same room together. It was supposed to be another debate between Trump and Biden, but the president’s Destructive discussion The performance created a downward spiral that culminated in his decision to quit. With the possible exception of the Nixon-Kennedy debate, there will be no other presidential debate in history.
The Harris-Trump debate will struggle to live up to that. But the intense closeness of the race means their debate will draw objections — perhaps, far more than usual.
“I can show you that over and over again over time, none of those three matters in terms of the outcome of the election,” Sosnick said of how the vice presidential selection, conventions and debates rarely happen. “In this election, all three were probably important. Discussions, to be sure, are important and will continue to be important.”
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