Who Won The First Biden-Trump Presidential Debate?
We partnered with Ipsos to poll voters before and after the candidates took the stage.
President Joe Biden turned in a dismal performance at the first presidential general-election debate on Thursday night. That was certainly the opinion of many pundits reacting in real time, but thanks to a new 538/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, we now know it’s how American voters felt as well.
However, while Biden’s hoarse and stumbling delivery immediately sent many Democrats into a panic about their chances of winning in November, our poll also found that the debate didn’t change many voters’ minds about either candidate. Read on for full details.
Biden performed even worse than expectations
How well likely voters who watched the debate expected each candidate to perform before the debate (lighter circle) versus how well they thought each candidate actually performed (darker circle)
We asked respondents how they expected each candidate to do, and how they actually did, on a five-point scale from “excellent” to “terrible” and converted each answer to a number on a 1-to-5 scale. “Excellent” was equal to 5, “very good” was equal to 4, “about average” was equal to 3, “poor” was equal to 2 and “terrible” was equal to 1. Scores were then averaged to create overall scores for each candidate. Respondents who answered “don’t know” to the expectations or performance questions were excluded.
538 and Ipsos polled the same likely voters both before and after the debate and asked them similar questions in order to make clean, before-and-after comparisons. For example, before the debate, we asked voters how they expected each candidate to perform on a five-point scale from “excellent” to “terrible.” Then, after the debate, we asked debate watchers to grade Biden’s and Trump’s performances on the same scale.
By this metric, Biden turned in the worst debate performance of the cycle (worse than any of the Republican presidential candidates did in any primary debates). On average, he received a performance score of 1.99 out of 5, which was also even worse than his already-low expectations score of 2.62 out of 5 among the same respondents.3Average scores were calculated by assigning a 1-to-5 score to each answer to the expectations and performance questions (where “excellent” was equal to 5, “very good” was equal to 4, “about average” was equal to 3, “poor” was equal to 2 and “terrible” was equal to 1) and then averaging them. Respondents who answered “don’t know” to the expectations or performance questions were excluded.
Trump, meanwhile, slightly outperformed his expectations. Going into the debate, he had an expectations score of 3.00 out of 5, on average, among likely voters who eventually watched the debate. Those same voters gave him a performance grade of 3.04 out of 5 — so not great, but not bad either.
Biden’s debate performance appears to have exacerbated concerns about whether he is too old to be president. We also asked poll respondents to evaluate the candidates’ fitness for the presidency on a similar five-point scale.4The options here were “excellent,” “good,” “mixed,” “poor” and “terrible.” We calculated average scores the same way we did for debate expectations and performance. On average, likely voters (this time, both those who watched the debate and those who didn’t watch) gave him a score of 2.23 out of 5 on physical fitness, down from 2.32 before the debate, and a score of 2.27 on mental fitness, down from 2.40.
On the flip side, voters now see Trump as fitter for the presidency. On average, his physical fitness score went from 3.06 before the debate to 3.16 after it, and his mental fitness score went from 2.79 to 2.88. Biden does have a slight edge over Trump when it comes to who voters see as more emotionally fit for office, but those scores didn’t meaningfully change after the debate: On average, Biden got a score of around 2.8 and Trump got around 2.6, both before and after.
Who gained and lost support
Share of likely voters who are considering voting for each candidate after the debate compared with before it
Of course, turning in the best performance in a debate only matters if it translates into votes — so we also asked poll respondents (both those who watched the debate and those who didn’t) which candidates they were considering voting for after the debate. And if there was any silver lining from the debate for Biden, this was it: The face-off doesn’t seem to have caused many people to reconsider their vote. That said, Biden did lose a small share of potential voters: Post-debate, 46.7 percent of likely voters said they were considering voting for him, which was 1.6 percentage points lower than before the debate. (Note that this was not a straight horse-race poll; respondents could say they were considering voting for multiple candidates.)
Trump’s support, meanwhile, barely budged, perhaps a reflection of the fact that, while Biden performed poorly on Thursday night, voters weren’t especially impressed with Trump’s performance either. The share of likely voters who said they were considering voting for Trump after the debate climbed from 43.5 percent to just 43.9 percent.
Despite not participating in the debate, third-party candidates actually gained more ground than Trump: Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gained 1.1 points in potential support, Green Party candidate Jill Stein went from 3.1 percent to 4.2 percent and Libertarian Chase Oliver went from 2.7 percent to 3.9 percent.
The popularity contest
Candidates' favorable and unfavorable ratings among likely voters before and after the debate
Unfavorable
No opinion/Never heard of
Favorable
With most voters’ views of the president and former president baked in, shifts in each candidate’s favorability before and after the debate were pretty small. While both candidates remain largely unpopular, Biden got a bit more so after the debate, while Trump got slightly less. Biden’s net favorability rating (the share of likely voters with a favorable opinion of him minus the share with an unfavorable opinion of him) went from -19.4 points before the debate to -20.2 points after it. (This, too, was among both debate watchers and non-watchers.) Meanwhile, Trump’s net favorability rating rose from -20.8 points before the debate to -19.4 points after it.
Of course, many people have a favorable view of Trump but not Biden or vice versa, but a sizable share dislike both major-party candidates. Both before and after the debate, that number was 21 percent of likely voters, according to our poll. Often called “double haters,” these voters face a difficult choice in November, and the way they break will probably decide the election.
Which issues matter most?
Share of likely voters who said before the debate that each issue was among the most important to determining their vote
The top {{ top_n }} issues are shown. Other issues are {{ other_issues }}. Respondents could select up to three issues from a list of 18, with additional options for “other” and “none of these.” Only those who responded to both the pre- and post-debate waves of our survey are included.
Finally, before the debate, we asked likely voters what issues would have the most impact on how they’ll vote this fall. (Respondents were allowed to select up to three issues from a list of 18.) The most common response was inflation or increasing costs, which 50 percent of likely voters cited as one of their top issues. That was followed by immigration (37 percent) and political extremism or polarization (25 percent).
The debate doesn’t seem to have changed Americans’ views on which candidates are better equipped to handle these issues. As they did before the debate, likely voters (both debate watchers and non-watchers) said Trump was better able to handle both of their top two issues: inflation or increasing costs by a 55-percent-to-45-percent margin, and immigration by the same spread. However, voters believe Biden is better able to handle political extremism or polarization, 56 percent to 44 percent, as well as the next-most cited issue on the list: abortion (57 percent to 43 percent).
All the data presented here comes from polling done by Ipsos for 538 using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, a probability-based online panel that is recruited to be representative of the U.S. population. The same group of respondents was interviewed before and after the presidential debate on June 27, 2024, to track whether and how their answers changed. The first wave of the poll was conducted June 20-25 among a general population sample of adults, with 5,058 respondents who said they were likely to vote in the 2024 general election. For the likely voter subset of respondents, the first wave of the poll had a margin of error of ±1.55 percentage points.
The second wave of the poll was conducted late on the night of June 27 and early in the morning on June 28 among 2,543 of the likely voters who had previously responded to the first wave; it has a margin of error of ±2.1 points. Of those respondents, 1,700 watched all or part of the debate. The subset of debate watchers carries a margin of error of ±2.5 points. Click here for a full methodology.
Editing and project management by Tia Yang. Copy editing by Cooper Burton. Quantitative editing by Geoffrey Skelley. Visual editing by Katie Marriner. Additional contributions by Mary Radcliffe and Holly Fuong. Original design and visual editing by Humera Lodhi and Christopher Groskopf. Art by Gabe Vogl.
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