Donald Trump skipped the first Republican debate. The former president took advantage of his strong performance in the polls and opted to grant an interview to Tucker Carlson, which quickly went viral on social networks. Days later, a poll found that the former president’s universe of likely voters shrank after Aug. 23.
Emerson College has conducted two polls in recent days: one before and one after the debate. The objective? To assess the number of likely voters willing to elect Trump as the Republican nominee for president. To do this, they interviewed 1,000 potential voters and established a three percent margin of error.
According to their findings, 56% of respondents planned to vote for Trump before the event. Days later, that number dropped to 50%. Support among Trump's own voters also fell, by 11%. Before the debate, according to the same poll, 82% of his voters said they would “definitely” elect him again, a number that decreased to 71% after the debate.
Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, weighed in on the results and shed light on the flip side of the survey. “While Trump saw a slight dip in support, the question from this poll is whether this is a blip for Trump or if the other Republican candidates will be able to rally enough support to be competitive for the caucus and primary season,” he said.
In that field, they found that the candidate who gained the most support after the debate was Nikki Haley, who increased 5 points from the pre-debate poll. She was followed by Mike Pence (4 points) and Ron DeSantis
(2 points). In turn, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was probably the candidate who received the most attention after the debate, dropped one point in this before and after made by Emerson.
“Different candidates have been able to pull varying demographic support from the Trump base, for example, Mike Pence, who saw an overall four-point bump in voter support, was able to increase his support in the Midwest from 4% to 13% of the vote, while Trump saw his Midwest support drop from 54% to 42% after the debate. Nikki Haley’s support increased from about 2% to 9% among voters over 50 while Trump’s support dropped within this age group from about 56% to 49% after the debate,” Kimball continued.
Who were the debate’s winners and losers?
When answering the first question, 27% of respondents considered Ramaswamy as the winner of the debate, followed by DeSantis (21%), Pence (12%) and Haley (11%).
In turn, the same respondents perceived that no one lost the debate (27%). However, interestingly, when they had to give a name, they chose DeSantis (21%), followed by Chris Christie (14%) and the former vice president (11%).
