POST-DEBATE REACTIONS, Latest Polls in Swing States | "Let Me Finish"

Poll Vault hello welcome back everybody to decisiones hq's let me finish I am Brandon finigan the co-founder of decisiones HQ in today's edition I am joined by Audrey falberg of National Review and Kirk B of hotline of course we're having this right after the great debate between kamla Harris and Donald Trump uh before we get into that debate in the aftermath of it we'll go right from the top with the latest and polling information and just as a spoiler nothing has really changed since the last Edition that I was on here a week ago and our current the hill and decision desk HQ national average we have Donald Trump at 46.2 to Harris 49.3 so a three-point lead for Harris in the National picture we find them tied at 47.7 each in Arizona currently at the time of this recording we find Harris with a negligible 6% lead in Nevada Trump with a negligible 3% lead in Georgia Harris with a very negligible .1% lead in North Carolina a slightly larger lead of three points in Wisconsin a 8% lead in Michigan and a negligible 4% lead in the state of Pennsylvania sorry Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for all of my all of our Pennsylvania uh viewers so not really much change since last week we've seen slight ticks for towards Trump ever so slight ticks towards Trump in some of the states and some of the national picture but really when you're looking at tth of a percent movement it it really doesn't mean anything especially when we still have uh nearly eight weeks to just under eight weeks to go for the presidential election so um we'll get right to the big thing which is of course the debate happened Tuesday night uh September 10th the same night as the state of New Hampshire's primaries Rhode Island's primaries and Delaware's primaries which we covered live with decision desk uh election data on our main website but that many plug aside let's get right into everything so uh Audrey I know you had some thoughts about this so we'll just kind of kick right on over to you about the debate sure well I think um first of all I'm in a car right now because I'm driving back from Steelton Pennsylvania where I had an interview with uh Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormack there so stay tuned for that but that is why I'm in a car right now but I did watch the debate uh very eventful I think uh first it's important to talk about expectations here um I I surveyed about 10 or 12 uh Democratic uh senators and um members of the House about expectations for KLA Harris and um you know a lot of them were talking about how with these kinds of things style is just as important if not more important than substance um they were some of them were pretty nervous about it Jim mcgoverin said she has to win that's that's just the bottom line um Adam Smith he uh he crossed his fingers in front of me and said he hopes she does well um obviously last night Democrats are not thrilled with her performance they think that she came across as um presidential she didn't have any major gas like some Democrats had privately feared um regarding Trump and expectations then we can kind of get into what actually happened on stage I'm sure KK will have a lot of thoughts here um Republicans were going into this debate thinking that Trump had the upper hand right um all he had to do they said was make the case as Reagan did famously and ask the audience are you better off now than you were four years ago just drill her on the economy and drill her on immigration um a lot of them are not pleased with how went of course they you know a lot of Republicans watching the debate called it the three three-on-one Showdown they blame the moderators for factchecking um kamla Harris or excuse me factchecking Trump and not KLA Harris live which we can get to in a moment um but Kirk I'm I'm curious your thoughts here on uh the the Miss opportunity uh stick here what what what are your thoughts on on how he did I I think it was a huge missed opportunity for Trump now Trump is pretty baked in this is what his seventh general election debate he's debated more in the general election more than any other candidate in history he's kind of he's a known quantity Harris had a little bit higher bar of introducing herself to voters and also not having the same poor debate performances that played her during the Campaign 2019 primary when she was running against Biden and she met those expectations you know I I have some thoughts on the moderators as well and I'm really interested to hear y'all's thoughts as well they were definitely a much bigger presence than they were in the CNN debate in June but at the same time I don't think we can the the excuse that it was a three-on-one from some Republicans that Trump had the debt stat against him it's it's not like David M you know told Trump to talk about the conspiracy theory in Springfield Ohio three separate times and bring up the the the they're eating the pets they're eating the dogs they're eating the cats he's not the one who made him focus a lot more on attacking Harris personally and didn't get into kind of the talking point in the the plan that Republicans wanted him to do until his closing statement when he talked about how if you vote for Harris it's going to be more of the same she's been empowered for the last four years here why hasn't this been changed he waited until the closing his closing statement to say that the moderators didn't necessarily go him into doing that in fact they they set him up for that first question of about are you is the economy better off now than it was for years ago and Trump couldn't land the message there he took every single uh bait that Harris threw at him every single Pitfall he attacked her he went and attacked her on and it was not the debate performance that Republicans wanted from Trump but will It ultimately matter I don't think so because I think it's very inelastic right now but Harris had a lot more to lose if she had a very poor debate performance to to duvail off your point there um you know it was really interesting watching how so many of his points were fact checked in real time um you know of course some of that is you can argue whether or not that's warranted but you know with Harris for example she said that there are no American troops in combat zones overseas which is of course patently false and there was no correction of that that said you know so his base and a lot of undecided voters have there's a strong distrust of the press right he could have looked in the camera and said why AR you factchecking her in real time right even that was a missed opportunity politically speaking and of course it's no he should he's done so many of these debates as you mentioned Kirk he should go in expecting this of course that you Debate know the the deck that in in his view the deck is going to be stacked against him right um and of course every Nimble candidate should know and understand how to go on offense and how to Pivot even if you think that you're being asked unfair questions as you said he he made the choice to take the bait right um correct me if I'm if I'm wrong but I recall KLA Harris has asked about immigration right and then she cleverly mentions the size of his rallies and that people and then you know then he gets the the mic and could just Hammer her on immigration but he goes but first I want to address the rallies right and she did he did exactly what she wanted to do so again um that phrase missed opportuni is what I keep hearing from Republican operatives um you know all of whom are are very frustrated by his performance um but don't necessarily think um as Brandon I'm sure can can speak to in a second that this will be a determinative point in the uh uh you know point in the election here that will really move polling because of course a lot of Millions American W watched this event but you know will that really move the needle here you know I think that when we've looked at elections we've looked at debates there have been very very few that had any actual impact on the direction of the uh election itself the most the most famous of all of them is 1980 um but also the 1980 election had the impact it had because of the timing of the debate because of the drama surrounding the debates no one in this was around I wasn't around in 1980 I was minus five but you can look at and and and read up on the just the back and forth between Carter and Reagan about including Anderson and Carter did not want Anderson on the stage that was the independent the Republican turn independent and Reagan wanted him on the stage in fact one debate he held with Anderson Carter didn't show up and while they disagreed Anderson made a very strong point that the person who should be answering for everything right now didn't bother to show up the problems in the country aren't mine or Mr Reagan's it's the man who isn't here all of this eventually came to a head Reagan relented Anderson was not going to be there at the final and only debate that was held and that debate was held in 1980 that's where Reagan delivered the famous are you better off now than you were four years ago closing line statement it was it was a brilliant piece to to end a debate with it had its impact because it was so incredibly close to the actual election you're talking like a week before like it was very close to the date of the election and again the drama and build up in expectations for what was going to happen going into that debate where Skyhigh High I believe it still holds the record for the most watched debate in terms of audience share um in modern television for the US it's a pretty long record too going back 44 years there's been some others that people have argued have made some impact the dakus uh HW Bush debates in 1988 um the bizarre the depending on how you looked at it the bizarre Trio debates that happened in 2000 between uh Gore and Bush might have had a little bit of movement but nothing as dramatic as 1980 everyone hopes that the debate's going to go that way one could make the argument that the most consequential debate um that's been held is the one that happened back in June which was so consequential Biden's not the nominee anymore because of it say we're missing someone on the stage who was at that June debate and and the reality is if KLA Harris wins in November one could argue that that debate was the first time where both participants lost because of the debate Biden lost because he obviously couldn't muster a full Down Ballot campaign as was evident with 90 minutes of whatever that was on television and because he was pushed aside over that you could say if Harris wins well she won because she became the nominee and she became the nominee because of the debate so I don't think that this debate is going to move the needle dramatically we're gonna see polls we saw um you always get those like Snap polls right after debate reaction Harris is winning all of them so far um she's winning pretty handily in in those so far so perception is that she did well over Donald the opposite of what we saw with Donald versus uh Joe back in uh June so but how that's going to impact an election where we're we're now starting to kind of see uh a pretty steady clip of polls that show both of them getting a certain margin already a certain vote share already in all the swing States right you're seeing uh polling that's kind of now seeing them all trickle up to the 4647 47 48 range in a lot of these polls you're not going to really see that kind of drop back down from here usually that final climb in vote share happens in the last eight weeks of the campaign and we're already in that point now we're within the eight-week window so I would advise people not to react to polls that are dropped today as up see the poll Pro this poll proves let it percolate let it get down into the electr let's see how it goes it took a little bit for us to see that uh Spike for Harris but it came for her when she became the nominee a lot of polling kind of gave her that little oomph that she was going to get that's why we also didn't see such a big spike during the convention because she already got that introducing the candidate rolling out cand alreadying it was already happening so she was already on that little rocket that little boost that she got um now it's kind of plateaued she's not climbing even further in poll she's basically polling at where she's been polling at Donald's numbers are kind of ticking up a little bit in some of the Swing State polling but again it's marginal changes we're not really seeing a lot of the uh wild swings that we've seen in previous elections it it seems way more calcified I want to ask you something real quick here you you're coming back from uh Pennsylvania did you get to talk to any voters while you're were up there at all was anyone talking about the debate up there that you interviewed or were talking with um it was a small event it was a press uh press conference at a gas station with about a dozen people so I did not get that chance um but what I will say is on the debate stage she she did have to answer questions about um her prior opposition to fracking which of course is you know so a bunch of people have jobs that are related to fracking in Pennsylvania um she she said on the that she since 2020 um she has not been fracking under her the current Administration um but you know ads uh that include her her prior um vow and pledge to to ban fracking really could resonate in the state and the Trump campaign would be wise to play clips of that of her saying that on television um in the in the leadup to election day um but yeah this this race is clearly a a nail nailbiter in Pennsylvania and I know brandan you're uh you're passionate about talking about polling there um but one one more note about polling um since we talked a little bit about that uh you know that that initial bump and euphoria that that Democrats had as soon as she ascended to the top of the ticket I I talked to Democrats um in hours leading up to the debate whether they were kind of surprised that she didn't have more of a lead um and that her honeymoon if you want to call it that in polling has kind of fizzled and um you know they they rejected that premise uh I talked to Dean Phillips who of course briefly ran against Biden for the nomination he said he doesn't feel like there's any sense of of Panic or nervousness that she is really pulling at parody with him it seems in this race is a dead heat um but we will see if that changes over the next few weeks what what events do you see changing that because right before we started recording here Trump said that there's not going to be a third debate he's not going to debate Harris again this was the largest live television audience for an event since the Super Bowl earlier this year like this year it doesn't seem like there's going to be anything else that is going to command that wide swath of attention on the campaign calendar in these final eight weeks here is there anything that could happen anything that you're thinking about that could like break through and maybe make this race a little bit either it pull away or is it is the cake kind of baked right now we're going to be having this game of inches until November 5th yeah I mean that is the most important question right I think it's really that's why the ground game matters for for both teams right and that's why um you're gonna probably start seeing a little bit more media turn of stories about um how strong Trump's ground game really is this time around because it's leaning and Outsourcing it a lot to um PS and the Republican groups um you know obviously there are unpredictable events that happen with any Administration so if there's some event that happens overseas um with one of our adversaries that obviously could have an impact on the election um something with with the stock market right um but yeah it will it will be interesting to see whether K haris decides to do a sit down interview with another major media Network and face really tough questions that could have an impact because of course you know during her that interview with CNN and during the debate she managed to not really have any word salad moments which I think was an important bar for her to clear because that was a huge Republican hit on her and then um with Trump yeah will he will he do major media interviews will he do Town Halls um and will he say some things that really turn off voters or is the cake baked and do people kind of are they comfortable with his personality and just kind of want to go back to an economy um under his administration you're do you have any uh thoughts on that KK I I don't know if the take is fully baked right now and I think we have to account for some sort of October surprises coming up here but it seems readily apparent that both candidates will not be in the same room again unless there's some commemorative ceremony that there was for 911 yesterday that W not have any debates they won't have the same level of platform the only thing that I could see really changing is after this really strong debate performance Audrey to your point is that Harris is more comfortable now putting herself out there you saw Tim Walls do the media interviews immediately after the debate and I think Harris is gonna start getting in front of the cameras more and putting herself at in front of Voters and more unscripted moments after a really successful debate here but I'm really excited to follow along your coverage of it as we gear towards November 5th here and speaking of that I think we can probably wrap things up right about here um of course obviously keep uh clicking the likes and subscribes here on our YouTube channel you know we're going to keep pushing these out at least twice a week from now through election day but I do want to note the decisiones HQ anything that you need when it comes to analysis of the elections waiting for those results on Election night during State primaries there is one special election still left this year before the November election that is in New Jersey a congressional special election next Wednesday night we will have live results for that starting at 800 PM Eastern Time on decisions hq.com where you can find all that information and do want to remind everyone we will be covering the general election of course on November the 5th with live results from all 50 states and the District of Colombia and we'll be doing a live show for that night the night that everyone is waiting for to see which of these two win with that and uh for Kirk B and for Audrey falberg and for myself Brandon finigan thank you so much and we'll see you again [Music]