On Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris met for their first and possibly only presidential debate. Each candidate hoped to gain a decisive advantage over the other in a very close race. And according to early assessments of the American public, Harris appears to have the edge.

As of 1 p.m. Eastern Time, 538 has collected three national polls and one swing state poll conducted since the debate.* Across all polls, more viewers said Harris won the debate than Trump. On average, 57 percent of national viewers said Harris performed better; only 34 percent said Trump performed better.

CNN/SSRS also conducted a poll of the same respondents before the debate. This allowed us to compare their opinions of the candidates before the event with their opinions of the candidates after the debate. And according to their poll, Harris’ net popularity rating among debate viewers rose from -11 percentage points (39 percent positive, 50 percent negative) before the debate to +1 point (45 percent positive, 44 percent negative) afterward. Trump’s net popularity rating, however, barely changed (from -11 points to -12 points).

This is all good news for Harris, of course—but there are a few caveats here. First, it’s still pretty early. Few polls have been conducted since the debate, and we’ll have more data very soon that will either confirm or cast doubt on the results. It’s also possible that perceptions of the debate will change as viewers process it (and as snippets are shared with those who didn’t watch). A poll conducted this weekend, for example, could show a different winner than one conducted on the night of the debate.

The second caveat is that even if Harris were to perform better, that doesn’t necessarily mean the debate would give her a significant boost in the polls. In the CNN/SSRS poll, just 4 percent of debate viewers said the event changed their minds about who they would vote for. Another 14 percent said it made them think but didn’t change their mind, while a whopping 82 percent said it didn’t affect their choice.

CNN/SSRS did not ask respondents directly who they supported, but two other post-debate polls (both conducted or sponsored by Republican companies) did. SoCal Strategies/On Point Politics/Red Eagle Politics found that Harris was three points ahead of Trump nationally after the debate, virtually no difference from the two-point lead they had given Harris in mid-August. And in their poll of debate watchers in the seven major swing states, Trafalgar Group/InsiderAdvantage found that the two candidates were virtually tied after the debate, at about 48 percent each. The same sample said before the debate that they planned to vote for Trump by about a point.

Again, these are just two polls, so it’s far too early to say the debate didn’t make a difference. We recommend keeping an eye on the 538 polling averages over the next few days to see if future polls make a difference.

The third caveat is that even if Harris does Even if poll numbers rise after the debate, those gains could be fleeting. CNN polls also found that Americans thought former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton performed best in all three debates with Trump in 2016, and after the first two debates, her rating rose in national polls (though other factors like the “Access Hollywood” tape likely played a role as well). But of course, the race tightened in the final days, and Clinton lost that election.

Looking back even further, CNN polls found that Americans overwhelmingly viewed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as the winner of the first debate in 2012. He continued to improve his poll numbers afterward. In the two subsequent debates, however, Americans preferred the performance of former President Barack Obama, and he ultimately won.

In 2008 and 2020, the same candidates (Obama and now-President Joe Biden) were considered the winners of all debates and also won the election. But there were multiple debates in those years too (so far, no further Harris-Trump face-off is scheduled, although a vice presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 1) and they took place much closer to Election Day than this year’s debate. (Had the June debate not led to Biden’s withdrawal from the race, this week’s debate would have been the earliest presidential debate before the general election in modern history.) In other words, this year voters have even more time than usual for the debate to fade from their minds.

How best to explain this? As disappointing as it may sound, the presidential election was very close even before the debate and will likely remain so afterward.

Footnotes

*Does not include a JL Partners/DailyMail.com poll of independent voters only. For completeness, these respondents also thought Harris had done better in the debate, 49 percent to 43 percent.