(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.)
Do Debates Matter at All?
On the surface, news sources seem to have seen what they wanted to see in Tuesday’s presidential debate.
Left-leaning CNN released results of a "snap poll" of pre-selected 605 registered voters showing that Harris prevailed over Trump by 63% to 37%.
Deeper dives reveal that the debate changed very little, however.
For example, on the vital issue of the economy, in which Trump has consistently outpolled Harris across media, an ancillary question in the same CNN poll found that the percentage of voters favoring Trump on the issue actually increased over a pre-debate finding, from 53% to 55%, giving him a commanding 20-point lead over Harris.
Our nation's 45th president also maintained his decisive pre-debate leads over Harris on immigration (56-33%) and serving as commander in chief (49-43%).
On the related question of which candidate better understands the problems of ordinary people, Harris advanced just one point, leading Trump 45-40% compared to 44-39% before the debate.
Harris also gained slightly in personal favorability compared to before the debate, while Trump’s approval ratings barely moved.
On the crucial question of whether the debate would change anyone’s vote, which was only reported at the end of CNN’s online story reporting the survey results and without any of the graphics that illustrated the poll’s other results, a crushing 82% said it had "no effect," while 14% said it made them "reconsider" but that it would not lead them toward "changing my mind."
(More details here: CNN Flash Poll: Majority of debate watchers say Harris outperformed Trump onstage | CNN Politics)
A measly four percent replied that their "voting intentions have changed," a figure so insignificant that it fits entirely within the poll’s stated 5.3 percent margin of error.
(See: CNN Flash Poll: Majority of debate watchers say Harris outperformed Trump onstage | CNN Politics)
Among independents, a decisive group who will likely decide the election, and whose support for Harris has fallen by double digits since August, a corroborating poll of 800 participants carried out by J. L. Partners, a UK political research firm that follows American politics, found that Harris outperformed Trump in the debate by a relatively narrow margin of 49 to 43%.
When the same sample was asked how they would vote, however, Harris only gained one point over pre-debate figures, with Trump still leading independents by 45-38%, compared to 44-37% before.
A month ago, Harris led among independents by a slight margin. (Donald Trump Sees Major Swing Over Kamala Harris Among Two Key Voter Groups - Newsweek.)
This one-point change is considerably smaller than the swing of independents to Trump suggested among battleground state voters who had favored independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. until he suspended his campaign in battleground states and endorsed Trump on August 23.
The block of voters who will likely decide the election is so small it could fit through the eye of a needle.
Remember, that needle barely moved following the debate.
By the morning after, this reality was already beginning to dawn on the regime media.
MSNBC admitted in the early hours of Tuesday that "it might not matter" in the November election.
Despite her openly stated anti-Trump bias, The New York Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury criticized Harris’s performance and mused that it might not have been convincing enough "to satisfy those voters who say they still need to know more about her in order to cast a ballot in her favor this November."
National Public Radio (NPR), which heaped praise on Harris’s performance and scorn on Trump’s, concluded that "this race is very much a coin flip, according to the polls, and that’s unlikely to change very much even after this debate."
Is there any wonder Harris is already asking for a second round?
The only answer is that she didn’t win, but that should come as absolutely no surprise. (See The Washington Post of Sept. 10, 2024.)
Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University. Read more — Here.