Swing state polls show tight race between Harris and Trump post presidential debate

After the first presidential debate in Philadelphia between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, new polls are showing where voters stand.

Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said there was very little impact on the polls from the debate.

Monmouth University recently released a national poll showing how likely voters were to vote for each candidate.

"We are at a point where it’s 10,000 voters here or there, it’s a point where polling just can’t measure. Polling measures in feet and yards and this is a game of inches right now," Murray said.

This poll and other swing state polls, including the critical state of Pennsylvania, show a tight race.

A new Marist poll of likely Pennsylvania voters after the debate shows Harris and Trump tied at 49% and both within the margin of error.

A Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times and Siena College poll also done after the debate shows Harris with 50% and Trump with 46%. That poll also giving insight into the gender gap in the race.

A poll of Black voters from swing states done by the Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion, which included Pa. voters, started before the debate and finished afterwards. It showed 84% of Black voters surveyed planned to vote for Harris, 12% planned to vote for Trump.

Harris in general showed stronger support among older Black voters than younger. In the same poll, 21% of Black men under the age of 50 planned to vote for Trump while 72% planned to vote for Harris.

 A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found voters view Harris slightly more favorably than they did in July, just after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Until recently, Lillian Dunsmuir of Bullhead City, Arizona, “didn’t really think about" Kamala Harris and had no opinion of the vice president. But now she likes what she’s seeing.

“She’s funny. I think she’s very smart. She can speak well,” Dunsmuir, a 58-year-old real estate agent, told AP. “I would feel safe with her because I think she can handle herself with foreign leaders. I like her because she’s for pro-choice, and so am I.”

Former President Donald Trump's favorability ratings remained steady, although the poll was conducted prior to the apparent assassination attempt of the Republican nominee on his golf course in Florida on Sunday.

According to the survey, about half of voters have a somewhat or very positive view of Harris, and 44% have a somewhat or very negative view. That’s a small shift since late July, just after Biden dropped out of the race, when views of Harris were slightly more unfavorable than favorable.

Six in 10 voters, meanwhile, have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump, while about 4 in 10 have a somewhat or very favorable view of him.

Changes in views of national figures like Biden, Trump or Harris have been rare over the past few years. Trump's favorability rating didn't budge over the course of the summer, despite a felony conviction, a close call with a would-be assassin in Pennsylvania, and a new opponent in the presidential contest.

But Trump has prevailed in the past with similarly low favorability ratings. He won the 2016 election despite being broadly unpopular and came close to winning in 2020 under similar conditions.

The survey also found that relatively small shares of voters — around one-third — say the phrase “would change the country for the better” describes Trump or Harris extremely or very well, suggesting that voters retain some gloom about their options in the race.

“Everyone talks about how polarized we are. I don’t see the election solving that,” Sean Luebbers, a 55-year-old high school history teacher in Upland, California, who supports Harris told AP. “I don’t see Harris solving that. I think a lot of the damage has already been done, so I’m not hopeful that the election will solve that. Right now, you might call it triage. We can’t make things worse.”

Still, there are other signs in the poll that Harris' introduction to the country is continuing to go well. Voters are more likely to say that Harris would make a good president and that the Republican former president would not make a good president. About half of voters say that Harris would make a good president, while 36% of voters say that about Trump. And voters think Harris has a better chance of winning the election in November, though a substantial share say the candidates are equally likely to win or don’t have an opinion.