It’s no secret that most people who watched the first 2024 presidential debate Thursday weren’t very impressed. Based on social media responses during the debate, former President Donald Trump was the clear winner – but what do the polls say?
According to three separate polls conducted after the debate, yes, Trump won. That’s even after making more than 30 false claims, according to debate host CNN.
Ipsos and Five Thirty Eight poll results found that 60% of debate watchers said Trump performed best in the presidential debate. Morning Consult found that 57% said Trump performed best on Thursday and Data for Progress found that 62% of voters said Trump won.
This victory seems to have done little to shift how people intend to vote come November. However, it has sparked questions for Democrat voters about whether Biden should remain the party’s candidate.
Time Magazine called the debate “disastrous” and POLITICO said that the president “face-planted,” while USA Today used “stumbling” to describe how things went.
“Biden appeared every bit the 81-year-old grandfather that he is, stammering with a thin voice through unintelligible arguments and often staring blankly, mouth agape, as Trump lobbed one verbal attack after another,” said Time.
Biden would be 86 by the end of another term in the White House. Trump is currently 78 years old. Poll results released by Morning Consult after the debate found that voters believe Biden is too old for another term, compared with 64% of all voters who said the same in the days before the debate. Data for Progress results showed that 67% percent of voters said that Biden is too old to be president, compared to just 35% who said the same for Trump.
Poll results from Data for Progress also showed that people are even more concerned with Biden’s age than they are concerned about the fact that Trump has been found guilty of 34 felony charges.
“When asked to choose which candidate trait they’re more concerned about, 53% of voters say they are more concerned about Biden’s age and physical and mental health, while 42% say they are more concerned about Trump’s criminal charges and threats to democracy,” Data for Progress said. That gap has widened since April and May, when 50% of voters said they were concerned about Biden’s age while 45% said they were more concerned about Trump’s criminal charges.
Ipsos too found that belief in Biden’s mental and physical fitness declined after the debate.
“Before the debate, 27% of likely voters rated Biden as good or excellent when it came to his mental fitness to be president,” it said. “Following the debate, that level declined to 20%. The decline was steepest among Democratic respondents, going from 56% before the debate to 42% after the debate.”
At the same time, the perception of Trump’s mental and physical fitness improved from 39% to 41% and 43% to 45% respectively.
Data for Progress results found that while a slight majority of Democrats (51%) believe Biden should remain as the Democrat candidate, just 35% of voters overall believe he should. Among Democrats, belief that Biden should be the candidate dropped 12 points from March to June.
“While our post-debate survey shows President Joe Biden has lost no immediate ground to Trump, most voters, including a 47% plurality of Democrats, say Biden should be replaced as the Democratic candidate for president,” said Morning Consult.
Still, a potential replacement for the president isn’t very clear.
Out of potential Democrat candidates, a plurality of Democrat voters said they would choose Vice President Kamala Harris, but that amounted to only 39%, and 27% when all voters were considered. Other contenders included Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and California Governor Gavin Newsom.
There’s also group of lesser-known contenders that have been floated as possibilities. They include Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
“Among alternative candidates, no candidate performs significantly better than Biden against Trump in a head-to-head race, though more voters indicate they are ‘not sure’ compared to the most well-known candidates,” said Data for Progress. Fox News Digital also reported that the Biden-Harris campaign raked in $27 million after the debate.
Results from Ipsos found that 73% of watchers thought Biden performed terrible and 33% thought Trump did as well. In fact, only 40% believed the former president’s performance was good or excellent. These results also showed that their performances did little to change voters’ minds about the coming election.
“Among respondents who completed both the pre- and post-debate survey, just 4% are giving less consideration to voting for Biden. In comparison, 2% are giving less consideration to voting for Trump following the debate,” Ipsos said.
Before the debate, 44% of respondents reported that they were considering voting for Biden, a percentage that remained virtually unchanged following the debate and is neck-and-neck with the percentage planning to vote for Trump. Most of the other voters are considering independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who held 18% both before and after the debate. He did not meet requirements to participate in the CNN-hosted event and held his own event at the same time.