Debate is Trump's chance to 'define Harris' warns pollster

this is Harris's opportunity to Define herself and Trump's opportunity to Define Harris so it's going to be a very high stakes Affair given that the election is already very close going into it good to have you with us um so we've got this National poll um that suggests a narrow lead for Donald Trump how significant do you think this is well I think the polls just naturally will go up and down a little bit over the course of a campaign uh any one poll will might bounce up and down due to uh L error and things like that I can't speak for the time Sienna poll because yugov wasn't involved in that our own poll shows a uh two-point lead for Harris uh over Trump but uh the difference between a two-point lead for Harris and a one-point lead for Trump is not a lot uh given the inaccuracies inherent in polling uh I think the safest way to describe the race is that it's close yeah um too close to call is what we've been hearing would you go along with that I certainly there's no certainty about who's going to win right now yeah it is uh an incredibly close and exciting race of course the way the presidential contest is decided uh it comes down to those key swing States doesn't it um just explain uh remind people listening how that works and why those states are so important of course uh so in the US the it's not the total National popular vote winner who becomes president but in each state the national popular vote winner with some minor exceptions uh wins that State's electoral votes which are based on the number of uh members of Congress that state has and then those uh electoral votes are added up to determine the actual winner so it is possible as we saw happen in 2016 and in 2000 for the candidate who wins who wins the most votes nationally to end up with fewer votes in the Electoral College and so then it comes down to those states which could go either way because we know exactly Which Way many of the states are going to vote uh Texas is going to vote Republican uh Florida is uh uh going to vote a Democrat it comes down to places doesn't it like um Pennsylvania Arizona what are the polls telling us about what voters are feeling in those key swing States well you have recently conducted a swing state poll with the times uh in which uh we pulled voters in Nevada Michigan Wisconsin Pennsylvania North Carolina Georgia and Arizona which are widely seen as some of the most important swing States uh and we found is a big shift from where we were before Joe Biden left the race uh back in July when we did a similar poll with the times uh Trump was leading in all seven of those States between by between one and seven percentage points now Harris is leading in four of them and trailing in the other three by two points or less uh so it's uh certainly a close race uh by no but way too early to say that one candidate hasn't the bag or even has a commanding lead uh but it's a much closer race than it was a month or two ago before Joe Biden dropped out and what are the big issues do you think for voters in those key States our polling continues to show that inflation is the number one issue for voters uh inflation and cost of living in general in the economy many voters especially Republicans are concerned about immigration a number of democratic voters are concerned about abortion uh but uh consistently inflation and and prices and the economy are the number one top issue interesting the way that certainly what we've seen here in the UK is that the polls themselves can actually play a part in a campaign so um people may vote tactically or they may decide that uh if for example they can look at who is uh the best placed candidate to defeat the one they don't want to be um successful they plump for those um but when you've got such a close race as this how do you think the polls affect it I mean do do you think it just makes it more likely that voters will actually go because there is an awful lot at stake here isn't it well certainly it's going to be a highly impactful election and I think the campaigns are going to be spending the next few months trying to make people think this is the most important election of their lifetime and that if they don't show up uh the country will be ruined that's uh increasingly standard fair from American political campaigns one thing that we'll be watching at yugov over the next few months is the question of the Divergence between the Congressional races and the presidential race uh there have been some signs in past races that some voters uh want to vote for a balanced government so if they think one presidential candidate is likely to win they may be likely to vote for a Congressional candidate of the other party to balance that uh so there where some tactical voting can come in uh it's unclear how big of a issue that is but we'll be conducting poll try to watch and see if that's going to be a major issue or not and of course the big event uh coming up uh tomorrow night is going to be that presidential debate the TV debate almost certainly the only one between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump um I mean how significant do you think this could be all these debates can be huge and have had the potential to move the polls in major ways we've seen in recent elections I think this is especially true with a candidate like Harris who is not especially welln uh our recent survey we conducted with the economists found that uh lots of Voters want to hear more from Harris uh 36% said they wanted to hear more from Harris in the in the news leading up to the election and just 22% said they wanted to hear more about Trump uh so this is Harris's opportunity to Define herself and Trump's opportunity to Define Harris so it's going to be a very high stakes Affair given that the election is already very close going into it and of course we saw how uh the performance of Joe Biden at the previous debate when he was still the Democratic candidate uh I mean his performance there was the beginning of the end of his bid for another term in the white house so I mean these these events these occasions have so much riding on them don't they they do and uh particularly in the US News Market uh there are not a lot of events that get truly National viewing audiences sign like major ma major shares of the country but uh presidential debates are one of those uh events that huge shares of the country do tune into so it's a rare opportunity for a candidate to speak to a truly massive National audience our recent poll found three quarters of both Harris supporters and Trump supporters say they're going to definitely or probably watch the debate yeah I mean it's going to have um a huge audience isn't it and um Talk just through uh how you think each of the candidates are going to be approaching that well I certainly can't speak for uh how they're doing each candidat is doing debate prep uh the candidates are going to you know in in any debate the candidates are going to try to hit their talking points really hard uh try to make their case for why they'd be the best person to lead the country and why the other person would be uh the worst CA the worst to leave the country and I think the mo Harris has the most writing on her because again she's much less known much less defined in the public eye uh the voters say they want to see see more from Harris we're going to be watching our polls very closely after the debate to see not just who voters say won the debate but to see whether views of Harris shift right now uh Americans have more more Americans have a favorable view of Harris than have one of trump so we're going to be watching to see if that changes if uh her favor abilities go up or down after the debate uh and see if that impacts then the horse race numbers and we heard there from one of her campaign ads which was all about attacking Donald Trump talking about some of the senior Republicans that have turned against Trump including his um former deputy Mike Pence um now both campaigns have definitely used them and Donald Trump wastes no opportunity to attack his uh rival Kamala Harris do they work in terms of turning public opinion uh the short answer is yes uh attack ads do work in essential everybody hates attack ads and says uh bemon the presence of attack ads but the fact that they work is uh proof by the fact that everyone keeps running them uh we did ask recently uh with your The Economist yugov poll uh whether Trump they thought Trump and Harris spend more time explaining what they'll do in president or attacking their opponent uh and PE Americans are more likely to say that Harris spends time explaining what she'll do 51 to 39 and more likely say that Trump spends time attacking uh uh 59% said Trump spends more time attacking and just 33% said that Trump spends more time explaining but both candidates will do attacking that's just essential to politics uh and campaigns have to find the right balance for a given campaign between how much of their money to spend on ads uh creating sending a positive message an explanation of what they'll do for the country and who they are as a person and how much to spend sending a negative message and there there has to be some of both in order to do a winning campaign at uh as competitive a level is the US presidential election but what exactly that balance is there's no science to it yeah and just finally uh we've talked about how close this race is and if uh the results are tight when it comes to election night um after the polls close on November the 5th I mean is it likely to take a while for the final result to come through do you think uh it really depends I say most election nights we generally know who wins on the night of the election uh in the 2020 election it wasn't until uh a number of days after the election that uh the networks called it for Joe Biden after some of the very close swing States finally finished counting and uh it became clear that Biden had won those states there had been indications that Biden was ahead and that he was likely to continue to be ahead uh but until the the count got finished and the recounts and all that there wasn't certainty so it's possible that we'll know on Election night here in the US uh the morning after in the UK or it could be that we'll have to wait several days or even longer well it's going to be uh an absolutely fascinating election um and a fascinating race um thanks so much uh for joining us David Montgomery senior data journalist on pollster for yugov us