Final Presidential Debate Likely Isn’t Persuading Voters

The last presidential debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden took place in Nashville, Tennessee, on the night of October 22, just 12 days away from Election Day. With the U.S. Elections Project already reporting a vote count of 50 million (more than that of the total early vote count in the entire 2016 election cycle), unfortunately, it seems as though the President was not able to use this debate to flip his campaign around from the 10-point polling deficit he is seeing.

Thankfully, this debate was significantly more well-organized, coherent, and civil compared to the first debate, and was just as good, if not better, than the Vice Presidential Debate. At least both Trump and Biden had the opportunity to speak uninterrupted and discuss policy issues, though the debate was far from perfect.

As this debate takes place, almost 50 million Americans have already cast their ballots across the nation, with the vote share in many key swing states, like Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia, reaching over 50 percent of the number of people that voted four years ago.

In addition, Donald Trump continues to see a 10-point deficit in national polls, while Joe Biden is doing exceptionally strong in most swing states, including the Rust Belt, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, and more. Donald Trump only leads (barely) in the swing states of Texas (by 0.5 percent) and Ohio (by 1.0 percent).

For Donald Trump, this was the last opportunity for him to flip over this polling deficit prior to Election Day. Unfortunately, despite the comparatively good performance in this debate compared to the first, he continues to be down significantly in polls, and most people don’t believe he won the debate, either. Polls by YouGov, CNN, and Data for Progress all overwhelmingly show that viewers believed Biden won the debate, by 19, 14, and 11 points respectively.

Again, this means that not many people were probably swayed by this debate. Because so many people have already voted and so many people still believe Trump lost this debate, this debate just confirmed what many people already believed: if you hate Trump, this debate again proves how bad Trump is; if you love Trump, this debate proves how great Trump is.

Trump continues to remain at a 12 percent chance of winning on the FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast.

Also, historical data indicates that in general, polling margins don’t change much in the last two weeks of the campaign.

Moving on to the actual debate, this debate was clearly much more civil. One of the key reasons was probably the addition of microphone muting—mics were muted, for example, when each candidate delivered their two-minute speech at the beginning of each segment. Though it wasn’t used too much, clearly, the fear of having their mics muted was enough to keep both candidates from jumping in while the other was speaking.

The debate moderator, Kristen Welker from NBC News, was also a great one. She received lots of praise (from both sides!) for her effective moderating. She asked both candidates difficult questions and stopped any candidates from talking over one another. In addition, she was able to make this debate feel like the only “real” debate of this debate season.

Like last time, Biden focused on the president and his administration’s mishandling of COVID-19, denounced him as a divisive and incapable leader, and again laid out his plans to combat this pandemic which has already taken the toll of more than 223,000 Americans. When Trump said the virus was going to go away and “people are learning to live with it,” Biden shot back and said, “we’re learning to die with it.” He also listed out the number of times that Trump said the virus would go away but didn’t.

In addition, the President also purportrated a number of false or misleading claims about the virus, such as saying that a vaccine would be available in “a few weeks,” despite medical professionals saying it would take until at least next year for a vaccine to go public.

Trump also continually said that he would release his tax returns, would deliver a better plan to replace the Affordable Care Act after repealing it, and so on, despite not going into any details and continuing to make the same claims over and over again. Biden told Trump to “release your tax returns, or stop talking about corruption,” while the two were discussing foreign influence and recent reports on Trump having a secret bank account in China.

He also tried to push a number of “radical” policies onto Biden, saying that he would create “socialized medicine,” would “end fracking,” would ban fossil fuels, and more. Biden continued to explain that this was not true. This may be bad news to progressive liberals, as many of these policies are what progressives have been trying to achieve—universal healthcare, the Green New Deal, etc.

Immigration policy was also a main topic of the debate. Biden blasted Trump for imposing a family separation policy, which has resulted in 545 migrant children being unable to be returned to their parents because the government had failed to locate the parents. Biden promised to deliver a proposal within 100 days of taking office which would provide a path to legal status for undocumented, unauthorized immigrants.

The worst, and the most lie-ridden section of the debate, was the section on climate change. Trump falsely claimed that construction of renewable energy facilities would create more emissions than fossil fuels and accused Biden of trying to force through a policy that would require buildings to be torn down and reconstructed with “little, tiny, small windows” and tried to claim that renewable energy was hugely expensive (Trump tried to claim the Green New Deal would cost $100 trillion) and that it would cost many American jobs. When Biden said that America should “transition from the oil industry,” Trump immediately jumped on the opportunity to turn it into a political advantage by mentioning Texas, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Ohio—states with large oil industry.

With regard to race, though, both candidates were unable to answer coherently why Black parents had to explain to their children how to deal with police encounters. However, Trump tried to insist that he had done more for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln, heavily criticized Biden for supporting a 1994 crime bill, and stating that he is “the least racist person in this room.” Rather than trying to convince people that the other candidate was racist, both candidates tried to convince voters that they would be better for Blacks and minorities. Biden also used the opportunity to blast Trump for stoking racial divide and tensions.

In conclusion, though this debate was much better than the first, it told us little that we didn’t already know. And with election day just 11 days away, it seems like that the debate was too little, too late for Trump to turn his campaign around.

I will remind you to go vote once again if you haven’t already, as it is very important that you fulfill your civic duty by voting. Learn more about voting here.

Check out our 2020 election coverage page for more posts on the 2020 election.