After debate, Harris surges to 5-point lead over Trump among registered voters in head-to-head matchup

A strong performance in Tuesday’s debate has boosted Vice President Kamala Harris to her biggest lead yet over former President Donald Trump, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

In previous Yahoo News/YouGov polls — one following last month’s Democratic National Convention and one released immediately after the vice president entered the race on July 21 — Harris and Trump were effectively tied. Harris’s best showing was a narrow 47% to 46% edge in August.

But the new poll of 1,755 U.S. adults — one of the first conducted after the Sept. 10 debate — shows Harris (50%) surging to a five-point lead over Trump (45%) among registered voters in a head-to-head match-up. She leads by a similar margin when third-party candidates are included (48% to 44%) and when only likely voters are surveyed (49% to 45%).

To put Harris’s numbers in perspective, President Biden — the man she replaced atop the Democratic ticket — never hit 50% against Trump in any Yahoo News/YouGov poll taken during Biden’s presidency. The last time Biden topped 47% was in May 2023.

Harris’s new lead is more about her gaining ground than Trump slipping. While the former president has held steady around 45%, Harris is now winning a significantly higher share of Democrats (95% vs. 90%) and 2020 Biden voters (92% vs. 80%) than Biden was.

Harris is also performing 4 points better than Biden was among Latin Americans, 5 points better among women, 14 points better among Black Americans and 17 points better among Americans ages 18 to 29. (These groups have small sample sizes and therefore larger margins of error than the survey as a whole.)

And Harris is flipping independents as well. Before Tuesday’s debate, Harris trailed Trump by 9 points (35% to 44%) with that crucial bloc; she now leads by 10 (47% to 37%).

Debate performance helps propel shift toward Harris

The latest Yahoo News/YouGov survey suggests that Tuesday’s debate has tipped a small but potentially consequential number of swing voters toward Harris — at least for the moment.

Among Americans who either watched the debate or followed the subsequent coverage of it, a full 56% say that Harris won. Just 26% say the same about Trump. In a break with longstanding partisan patterns, the number of Democrats who say Harris won (94%) is nearly 40 points higher than the number of Republicans who say Trump did (57%). Just 21% of independents think the former president came out on top.

Nearly half of those familiar with the debate, in fact, say Trump delivered a poor performance (48%) — while a clear majority (58%) say Harris’s performance was either excellent or good.

That same group sees Harris as the candidate who came across as more “presidential” (51% to 35%), “coherent” (50% to 29%), “competent” (50% to 36%), “focused on policy” (48% to 34%) and “strong” (47% to 39%). Trump was seen as more “insulting” (53% to 28%) and “untruthful” (49% to 35%) — as well as more responsible than Harris for making the debate “embarrassing” (50% to 29%), “painful” (46% to 30%) and “infuriating” (44% to 33%) to watch.

But Harris didn’t just win the personality contest Tuesday night; she won the policy war, too. Respondents who followed the debate say the vice president gave better answers than Trump on every issue except immigration, including abortion (53% to 30%), the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol (49% to 28%), her own record (45% to 31%), the cost of living (45% to 39%) and even Trump’s record (44% to 36%).

As a result, 46% of them now say the debate made them think better of Harris. Just 20% say the same about Trump — including a mere 15% of independents.

What viewers learned from the debate

In trying to assess how Tuesday’s clash influenced voters, Yahoo News and YouGov asked three questions about both Harris and Trump: How much did you learn about them? What specifically did you learn that you didn’t know before? And were the things you learned mostly positive, mostly negative or mixed?

For Trump, about half of debate followers say they learned nothing; the other half say they learned either a little (31%) or a lot (21%). Among those who did learn something about Trump, however, only about half say the things they learned were mostly positive; the other half say that what they learned was mostly negative or mixed.

In contrast, nearly seven in 10 debate followers say they learned either a lot (32%) or a little (38%) about Harris — and about two-thirds of that group say the things they learned were mostly positive rather than mostly negative or mixed.

So what did respondents who paid attention to the debate learn about the candidates? The top answer for Harris was “what she plans to do as president” (34%) — an option that only 8% selected for Trump. The other leading responses for Harris were “temperament” (32%) and “fitness to be president” (32%).

Will Harris’s lead last?

A sizable majority of those who watched the debate or followed the subsequent coverage (59%) want more debates between Trump and Harris; just 25% do not.

But while Harris has called for another debate in October, Trump has ruled it out. So Tuesday’s meeting between the candidates is likely to be the last. Will its effects linger through Election Day?

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests that broader attitudes toward Trump and Harris have shifted slightly in the aftermath of the debate.

In July, most Americans thought Trump (53%) rather than Biden (20%) had a better chance of winning the election. Harris took the lead on this question after the DNC (39% to 36%) — but now, after the debate, she leads by more (42% to 33%). Harris’s favorable rating is also up two points since the convention, from 47% to 49%. The perception that Harris is a “liberal” has declined by two points (from 63% to 61%) over the same period, while the perception of her as a “moderate” has increased slightly (from 16% to 19%). And Harris (44%) leads Trump (40%) on a new question about who has “clearer plans to solve America’s problems.” Democrats and Republicans were tied at 37% on the previous version of this question.

Meanwhile, perceptions of Trump have moved in the opposite direction since last month’s Yahoo News/YouGov poll. A full 47% of Americans now say they would describe Trump as “chaotic,” up from 43% previously. Other negative descriptions have inched upward as well: “dishonest” (from 43% to 45%), “extreme” (from 41% to 43%) and “weird” (from 36% to 38%).

Finally, half of Americans (50%) now say Trump is “too old” for another term as president, up from 47% in August. That number has never been higher.

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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,755 U.S. adults interviewed online from Sept. 11 to 13, 2024. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to Nov. 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.9%.