What debate? Harris and Trump back to brutal grind of swing state campaigns

Trump is in Arizona on Saturday and then headed to Michigan, both states he narrowly won in 2016 and then lost four years later, as he attempts to recover from what was widely recognised to be a damaging performance.

The contest for the White House remains on a knife edge.

A CNN poll showed that 63% of debate watchers thought Harris won as Trump made outlandish claims about immigrants eating family pets and Democrats wanting to kill newborn babies. A focus group of undecided swing state voters put together by the Washington Post overwhelmingly said Harris came out on top.

Even Fox News conceded the defeat. Its political analyst, Brit Hume, said Trump spent too much time airing old grievances that do nothing to win votes.

Still, more cautious Democrats recognised that one bad night for the former president is far from a knockout blow and that their candidate remains particularly vulnerable on the economy, the top issue for large numbers of voters hit by surging inflation.

The CNN poll showed that confidence in Harris to handle the economy fell by two points to 35% because of the debate after she failed to address inflation, or even acknowledge the hardship it has caused, while trust in Trump on the issue rose by two points to 55%.

And while the latest YouGov poll gives Harris a nine-point advantage over Trump in favourability ratings, the presidential race is still neck-and-neck with each candidate claiming the support of 45% of the electorate.

Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette Law School polling of voters in the swing state Wisconsin, where only about 20,000 votes separated Trump and his opponent in the last two presidential elections, said that while it was clear Harris won the debate, he doubted the outcome would shift the dial very much in those states where the election will be decided.

Swathes of Trump supporters lamented his performance but then shifted the blame to the debate moderators by accusing them of picking on the former president while giving Harris an easy ride.

Polling says that about one in 20 voters in swing states have yet to make up their minds about who to vote for. But political analysts are sceptical that so many people are really undecided when Trump is such a known and divisive candidate.

Franklin said his polling showed that when uncommitted voters in Wisconsin are pressed about the reasons for their indecision, it often has less to do with policies or individual candidates than how they feel about politics in general.

In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by fewer than 45,000 votes out of nearly 6m cast. Four years later, Trump increased his vote in the state by more than 400,000 ballots. But he still lost Pennsylvania in 2020 because Biden was able to boost the Democratic turnout by 530,000 votes.

That was a pattern repeated across swing states that delivered a Biden victory and that Harris must now almost certainly win. Probably no state is more pivotal than Pennsylvania.

Polling shows that enthusiasm for the election among Democrats shot up after Biden dropped out of the race in July. Franklin saw it in Wisconsin.

The YouGov poll shows that, nationally, 72% of Harris supporters say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. Only 67% of Trump supporters say the same. But enthusiasm is significantly lower among younger people, whom the Democrats need. Only 78% of under-30s say they are likely to vote, compared with 95% of over-45s, who lean toward Trump.

The Democrats were particularly worried about the impact of Gaza policy on the significant Arab American vote in swing state Michigan, but Valentino thinks it has lost some of its sting, particularly among younger voters now focused on concerns about Trump returning to power.

After the debate, Harris faced criticism for spending her time taunting Trump instead of detailing economic policy and a political vision. But Democratic strategists are only too aware that the surge in turnout for Biden in 2020 was less about support for the candidate than to get Trump out of the White House.