Here's Who Polls Show Is Expected to Win the Harris-Trump Debate

Later on Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris and former and potentially future President Donald Trump will meet for the ABC News debate. It could quite possibly be the only debate between them, though the Trump-Vance campaign has signaled a willingness to participate in several debates. Multiple polls show who is expected to win the debate, and just like the general election, it looks to be close.

According to a YouGov America poll from Monday, 40 percent of U.S. adults believe that Harris will win the debate, while 38 percent believe that Trump will. Twenty-two percent say they are unsure.

When it comes to the partisan breakdown, 80 percent of Democrats and Republicans both believe their candidate will win the debate, while Independents are evenly split--at 32 percent--on which candidate will win.

The question surveyed 5,182 respondents.

% who think Harris / Trump will win the debate
U.S. adults: 40% / 38%
Democrats: 80% / 7%
Independents: 32% / 32%
Republicans: 8% / 80%https://t.co/wQHwCZuuT8 pic.twitter.com/dFtFqM7FSV
— YouGov America (@YouGovAmerica) September 10, 2024

A previous poll from YouGov showed that two-thirds of Americans support muting candidate's microphones when they're not speaking. Not only is this one of the rules in place for the ABC News debate, but it was the one Harris and her campaign threw a particular fit about. It wasn't until less than a week before the debate that her campaign even signaled she had agreed.

The rule about muted microphones was also in place for the CNN debate between Trump and President Joe Biden on June 27. Biden performed so disastrously, despite his campaign insisting on the rules in place, that he was pushed out of the race less than a month later.

The poll's write-up noted that "More expect Kamala Harris to out-debate Trump than thought Biden would," though that's pretty much a given considering the particularly low expectations that were in place for Biden and how poorly the American people thought he did, according to snap polls following that debate. Again, even with the low expectations, Biden still did so poorly that his fellow Democrats forced him to withdraw.

That poll was conducted August 29-September 1 with 1,082 U.S. adult citizens and had a margin of error of approximately plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Another poll, this from Cygnal released the morning of the debate, showed that Harris enjoys an edge when it comes to who likely general election voters believe will win the debate, 46.1 percent to Trump's 42.5 percent. There's still 11.4 percent who are unsure.

As we covered earlier, the poll shows Trump and Harris to be "statistically tied," though there's plenty of bad news for Harris in that a plurality of voters, as well as a plurality or majority of almost every demographic included in the poll, believe that the Democratic Party's policies are more to blame for "the rising cost inflation" as opposed to the Republican Party's policies. Further, 69.1 percent of voters believe that Harris is at least "somewhat responsible" when it comes to "the policies of the Biden-Harris Administration."

In other debate news, Nick Arama just covered at our sister site of RedState how the Harris campaign is being mocked over how she needs a shorter podium at the debate due to the height difference between the candidates.