The Stakes of a Harris vs. Trump Debate
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It's entirely online and super flexible. Fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a therapist and get started in minutes. Visit BetterHelp.com slash run up today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash run up. Tonight, Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will finally meet in person. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will face off in the second presidential debate of 2024.

And while it's hard to compete with the significance of the first debate, this could be the only time that Harris and Trump will meet directly. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris gearing up to debate as a brand new poll shows this race is neck and neck. And the debate comes right after a new poll from The New York Times and Siena College, which found a close race: very enthusiastic Democrats and Republicans.

and a small yet important group of voters who still need to make up their minds, the undecideds. Today, what we learn about those voters in the poll, and what a few undecided voters are hoping to hear from both candidates tonight. From The New York Times, I'm Ested Herndon. This is The Run-Up. First, I call up my colleague Ruth Egelnik, the polling editor for The New York Times. Thank you so much, Ruth, for doing this. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me.

The Times and Siena College just came out with a national poll of likely voters that found the race neck and neck, with Trump at 48% and Harris at 47%. And with those results coming just before the debate, we wanted to focus on the people who might be swayed by what they hear on stage.

Yeah. So in this highly polarized era, it's sort of a shrinking pool of people who are actually undecided. And there are a lot of different ways to measure that. But if we look at just purely people who said that they are undecided or might not vote, it's about 5% of voters. When we really boil down to the true people who say, I really don't know who I'm going to vote for, it's probably closer to 2% or 3%.

which is pretty small. But if you think about how close the race is in a lot of these swing states, two or three percent is really the difference maker. But there's also this sort of slightly bigger pool of people who aren't fully decided. They say they'll probably vote for someone, but not definitely. They're unsure. That might put the

pool a little bit bigger at about 10%. But either way you measure it, the types of people who are making up their minds in these groups are pretty similar. It's sort of demographically similar. They're younger voters. They tend to be more likely to be Black or Hispanic.

And by far, their number one issue that they care about is the economy by a long shot. Is this someone who is definitely going to vote or is someone who is less likely to vote than your typical kind of voter? Overall, somebody who's less likely to vote than your typical voter, they're both less likely to say that they plan to vote and they're less likely to have voted in the past. And we know that past voting is the single best predictor of future voting. So even though there's sort of a

lower likelihood to vote group. A lot of them do vote. And most importantly, they are sort of the deciding factor. And one thing that I didn't mention earlier that I think is worth noting is they are much more likely to describe themselves as politically moderate. So they're not sort of these hyper partisans that we've come to know in the election who are the loudest voices. It's these kind of people who are on the fence, more moderate and less likely to vote, but will vote and will decide the election.

Considering that this is a unique election and that one of the candidates obviously was on the ballot the last two times and then Democrats have kind of come to this late arrival of Kamala Harris, what do we know about the pool of undecideds? Is that 5% that you're isolating bigger or smaller than it typically is at this time?

You know, I mean, it's funny. Typically in the last several elections, it's about the same size because we've reached a sort of hyper-polarized era where most people have already made up their minds. But like you said, these are pretty well-known candidates, particularly Trump.

We asked this group of undecided voters and everybody if they wanted to learn more about the candidates. And most said that they knew what they needed to know about Trump to make their decision, which is kind of interesting because they're still undecided. But a much bigger group, more than half of these undecided voters, said that they didn't feel like they knew enough about Kamala Harris to really make up their mind. We did ask these groups of people sort of what they wanted to know about each of the candidates.

And for Harris, the overwhelming answer was they wanted to know more about her policies. They felt like they didn't know enough about her policies. For Trump, a lot of people said policies, but a lot of people sort of mentioned character. They wanted to know a little bit more about who he was and what he stood for.

So it seems as if they have kind of opposite problems. Donald Trump's ideological values are known, even though his personal character is the thing that the most undecided voters had a kind of outstanding question about. Whereas Harris, there seems to be an understanding of the personal character, but an open question around the policies and kind of what a Harris presidency would look like. You mentioned the kind of higher number of voters who said they were looking for more information for Harris.

Do we know, like, is this debate kind of make or break on that? Like, it does seem as if one of the last remaining moments in the race for there'll be such high attention and she can kind of answer that definition question. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think that both Harris and Trump have tried to define Harris. And this debate seems like

that opportunity for both of them. And it does feel like sort of make or break for this group who is interested. They want to vote, but they feel like they haven't learned enough specifically about Harris. It feels like this debate is

is for them. Now, it's interesting. Historically, undecided voters are a little less likely to watch the debate, mostly because these are people who are not super tuned into politics in general. And so, for example, at the last debate, which got a lot of attention, we had a lot of undecided voters who consumed the debate via clips after or heard about it from friends. So

So that will be kind of interesting to watch. This feels sort of make or break for Harris, but I think it's almost as important sort of the narrative that comes out of the debate for her and how these undecided voters are consuming it. The poll also said that 60% of the likely electorate said they were very enthusiastic about voting. What does that say about this new conversation?

kind of landscape of the race. I remember talking to you before, and so much of this race was defined by how many people were not enthusiastic about voting. Have we seen that change? Yeah, that's been one of the biggest changes that we've seen in this election. It's really kind of wild to watch just how quickly the enthusiasm spiked.

after Biden dropped out and Harris took over at the top of the Democratic ticket. And what's interesting is before when we talked last time, there was this enthusiasm imbalance where you had very enthusiastic Republicans and the Democrats were sort of a little less excited. And now they've really come to match each other. And Democrats are just as enthusiastic, if not a little bit more enthusiastic than Republicans.

Yeah. And it seems as if with the switch, like Democrats are now unified behind their nominee. Obviously, you're saying they're enthusiastic, which probably brings them back to the baseline levels of kind of party support that Biden was not seeing. Does that only make the kind of question of undecideds more important? It feels as if, you know, what we've seen from kind of a couple months ago now is that Democrats have just returned from having a ton of problems to the traditional electoral problems. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. And this sort of raises the age old campaign question on persuasion versus turnout. And, you know, with the Democrats now, what they they're kind of settling on is it seems like they might have good turnout from their base that's enthusiastic and excited about.

But like you said, that sort of brings them to match Republicans and solves one problem. It doesn't solve that persuasion problem of trying to get at that small but crucial pool of undecided voters and sort of persuade them to vote for their party.

If you could choose a moment in the debate you'll be looking for, what do you think it'll be? Is it specific to an issue or something like that? What does the poll tell you that you think should be the thing we're looking for? Yeah, I think the poll tells me that the essential issue that these candidates should be discussing if they want to be persuading undecided voters is the economy, just the economy. This is something that matters fundamentally.

far and away more than any other issue. And I think to the extent that undecided voters are using this as a chance to tune in and learn about the candidates, how they discuss the economy, I think will have the biggest impact on how undecided voters split. Well, thank you. I appreciate your time as always and the insight and we'll see how this goes. Yeah, we'll be watching. Thanks for having me. In addition to talking with Ruth, I wanted to hear directly from some of those undecided voters ahead of the debate.

Hello? So my colleagues and I called some people who told posters that they were on the fence. Because I look at Kamala and I'm not convinced on her yet. So I'm still just getting more information on Kamala and trying to see exactly where she's coming from.

And with Trump, I'm still trying to gather information and compare the two. I'm just not quick to rush out to the polls for them right now. I wish we had more choices. The first person we spoke with was Jerome Enders. He's originally from Yonkers, New York, but says he's lived in Georgia for more than 20 years. I want to hear what they're going to do for American citizens.

That's my biggest thing, housing, economics, and education. With those three, education, housing, and economics, that could at least build our country back or stabilize our country. Everything else is just fluff to me.

Jerome is looking to the debate for answers. I really want to see what Kamala is all about. When she go against Trump in a debate, that'll let me know what she's about. Is she emotionally stable? I want to see what her mentality is. You know, I want to see how she handles Trump when you come at her with the crazy stuff. No, that'll let me know where she's at, what she has to do with Trump, what she's going to talk about. Can she articulate? Is she going to spin? Or is she going to deliver?

That's all. Now I want to see what she brings out of Trump. I want Trump to talk more about issues instead of people. Not just character assassination. I'm not talking about, you know. No, I want Trump to answer questions. That's it. You got me excited looking for this debate now. You got me excited looking for this debate. Hello? The next undecided voter we talked to was Fitzwilliam Vandermark Geary.

He lives in Pennsylvania, and he also doesn't like the major party options. Out of all of them, the one that I found the least abrasive and egregious as a candidate was Robert Kennedy. And he is now no longer in the race, so I'm not quite sure where that leaves me and other people who found him to be an appealing candidate.

At this point, I don't particularly like either of my choices for a variety of reasons. The nicest way I can put it is one of the candidates is a very brash individual and the other one, during their time in office, I have no idea what they were doing. And the only thing I'd ever heard about them during the last campaign run was their antics when they were in state employment on the West Coast. So to say I do not like either of them for various reasons.

I don't particularly care for Harris's lukewarm response to border policy or that she's changed her opinions on fossil fuels. And as far as Donald Trump is concerned, for a conservative, he seems incredibly lax on the idea of the

pro-choice or anything in that nature. You know, it seems like he maybe or he's walking things back for the sake of the election, not necessarily because what he believes is, you know, X or Y. I would like either candidate to put like firm ground behind the things that they're promising out of their potential presidency. I know that there tends to be some flip-flopping about their political views on certain things, border security, gas fracking, things like that.

You know, telling people what they want to hear does not really make me feel good that they're going to follow through on any promises. We also spoke with Johnny Reed from Indiana.

who told us she voted Democrat in the last presidential election. At 2020, I was hoping for Biden, but what Biden showed me ain't what he said. I don't really see a whole lot that he really did for the middle class. That's what got me on the borderline. I don't see a lot what he did to change our way of living.

Johnny also isn't sure about Harris. I really have to listen to her because from what I heard, I heard a lot of Black people kind of didn't trust her, but I need to hear what she, her conversation and what she's going to do for not just the poor, the rich, and the, you know, the migrants. What's she going to do for just the regular people? I mean, we're suffering here from high rent, rent is sky high, and people's not making the money that the rent are. You know what I'm saying? We're

The rent is sky high, but the money is not adding up for the rent. The cars are sky high. The money's not adding up for it. The insurance is sky high, but the money's not adding up for it, you know, in people's houses. So we need somebody that's going to kind of change the narrow of that. It might not be Donald Trump. It might just might not be nobody.

I wish I could go for Trump, but I don't trust Trump. So why would I go for somebody that I don't trust? I mean, he's the only one that can do what he do and never have to pay a price for it. So how do you trust a man like that to take care of the world? I mean, anybody else, if it was a regular person, they would have been in jail. If they say they did all the things they say and he did. How is he the only one exempt from that? How? I don't understand. Last. Dr. Graham.

was Charles Graham, a doctor in North Carolina, who walked us through a bit of his political history. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I watched to see if he was going to do the stuff he said he was going to do, and he didn't.

16, I voted for Donald Trump. That seemed like the thing to do. At the time, it seemed like a difference. It seemed like, okay, we have a longstanding history of politicians. I know that politicians are full of shit. Here's a not politician. Maybe this will be better. I would be inclined to vote for a circus clown or anybody that isn't a politician. Politicians to me just...

You know, it's just a lot of words. Nothing ever gets done. And then I stayed home in 2020. I couldn't hold my nose tight enough. I just couldn't do it. As for how he's feeling now? I guess I am still, to some extent, undecided. Mostly because I don't...

have a ton of faith. Frankly, I don't have a ton of regard in either candidate. The idea that these are the two best people we could come up with to me is completely asinine. And frankly, I would sooner vote for the lady that puts a sticker on my receipt at Walmart, because at least I know that she can get a sticker in the right place. The problem with Donald Trump is he can't keep his mouth shut. And he thinks that everybody...

wants to hear what he thinks all the time. Like, nobody cares. Nobody cares. Just do your job. But then the thing about Kamala Harris is, well, she's been there for four years. Still can't afford groceries, right? Oh, she's going to fix that on day one. Well, you've been there for day 360 three times, right? So...

What sane human would believe that something's going to change on day 366 because now we've elected her? Literally no person with two brain cells to rub together could possibly make that connection. So no, I don't think either of them will be effective. I don't think either of them is the

We asked these voters if we could follow up with them after the debate.

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. I will go out of my way to watch a few minutes. It's on Tuesday night. I'll go out of my way. I have Tuesday off. I'll go out of my way to watch a few minutes of it. And then the only thing I can promise you is that I will tell you what I think about it. I will not promise you that there'll be words that you can use on the air. So on Thursday, we may hear from them again. And we'll be hearing from other people about what they thought of the debate and if it helped them make up their mind. See you then.

The run-up is reported by me, Ested Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Caitlin O'Keefe, and Anna Foley. It's edited by Rachel Dry and Lisa Tobin, with original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Diane Wong, Sophia Landman, and Alicia Baitube. It was mixed by Chris Wood and fact-checked by Caitlin Love.

Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Sam Dolnik, Larissa Anderson, David Halfinger, Maddie Maciello, Mahima Chablani, Nick Pittman, and Jeffrey Miranda. Do you have questions about the 2024 election? Email us at therunupatnytimes.com. Or better yet, record your question using the Voice Memo app on your phone, and then send us the file. That email again is therunupatnytimes.com.

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