Independent Voters Move to Biden in Debate

TO: Interested Parties

FROM: Becca Siegel, Meg Schwenzfeier, Biden for President

RE: Independent Voters Move to Biden in Debate

Based on research we conducted during tonight’s debate, it is clear that the more voters heard from Donald Trump, the more they remembered why they dislike him. Meanwhile, President Biden started slow but finished strong. In a survey of undecided voters in a Midwest state, debate-watchers agreed that President Biden won the debate and the more they saw of Donald Trump’s erratic and vindictive behavior, the more they remembered why they voted against him in 2020.

One undecided voter summed it up like this: “I don’t like Trump’s vindictiveness. I don’t want to go through that crap again. I don’t want to witness that as an American”

The data from undecided voters immediately following the debate backs this up too:

Overall, the President’s vote share among a group of undecided voters in a battleground state went up by more than 10 percentage points from the debate, while Donald Trump’s support stayed flat.

Voters rated overall Biden’s performance better than Trump’s, and more than three quarters of undecided voters came out of the debate with concerns about Donald Trump’s temperament.

On the issues and substance, voters don’t like what Donald Trump is offering. By a 3-to-1 margin, voters said that President Biden better addressed the issues.

Data from other sources confirms what we have seen in our internal data:

Matt Barreto: “If you haven't been watching the Univision FG of undecided Latino voters, nearly every single undecided voter said they now support Biden, not Trump! Latinos were watching and listening and Trump sounded like a crazy liar.”

Over the course of the night, Trump continued to double down on unpopular policy positions and petty and vindictive personal anecdotes, while refusing to address the issues that undecided voters actually care about. His quotes below were particularly poorly performing among the undecided voters who will decide this election in November:

Some of Trump’s worst moments were petty attacks, which he returned to over and over again throughout the night:
- Trump on President Biden’s support from veterans: “First of all, our veterans and our soldiers can't stand this guy they can't stand him. They think is the worst commander in chief if that's what you call them? That we've ever had, they can't stand him. So let's get that straight and they liked me more than just about any of them. And that's based on every single bit of information.”

Trump on his own popularity: “Just you understand we have polling, we have other things that they rate them the worst. Because what he's done is so bad. And they ranked me one of the best. Okay. And if I'm given another four years, I will be the best. I think I'll be the best nobody's ever created a economy like us, nobody ever cut taxes like us. He's the only one I know he wants to raise your taxes by four times.”

Trump on Biden: “I've never seen anybody lie like this guy. He lies like I've never seen. So many other things to and we mentioned the laptop, we mentioned Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, everything he does is a lie. It's misinformation and disinformation the losers and sucker story that he made up as a total lie…”

Trump’s responses on January 6, and refusal to answer whether he would accept the result of the election, were extremely unpopular with undecided voters.
- Trump on Jan. 6: “Let me tell you about January 6, on January 6, we had a great border. Nobody coming through. Very few on January 6, we were energy independent on January ever. We had the lowest regulations ever on January 6 we were respected all over the world all over the world...”

While Trump refused to answer the questions that undecided voters actually care about, Biden addressed them head-on: bringing down inflation, addressing global warming, helping families pay for childcare and lowering the cost of living, and governing on the world stage. On the actual issues, viewers reacted much more positively to Biden’s responses than to Trump’s:
- On childcare:
  - Joe Biden: “We should significantly increase the childcare tax credit. We should significantly increase the availability of women and men or single parents to be able to go back to work…”
  - Jake Tapper: …In your second term, what would you do to make childcare more affordable? Donald Trump: Just to go back, the general got fired because he was no good…”

On climate change:
- Biden: How can we do anything if the United States can't get pollution under control. One of the largest polluters in the world… [But], we're making significant progress. By 2035 we will have cut pollution in half. We have made, we have made significant progress, and we're continuing to make progress.
- Trump: “So I want absolutely immaculate clean water. And I want absolutely clean air. And we had it, we had it. We had h2o, we had the best numbers ever and we did we were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever. And my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage actually.”

On protecting Social Security:
- Biden: “Make the very wealthy begin to pay their fair share.”
- Trump: “But social security - he's destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them on to social security….”

On abortion:
- Biden: “What’s he going to do? In fact, if the MAGA Republicans, he gets elected and the MAGA Republicans control the congress and they pass a universal ban on abortion period across the board... I'll veto it. He'll sign it.”
- Trump: “They will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth, if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, we'll put the baby aside. I will determine what we do with the baby, meaning will kill the baby. What happened is we brought it back to the states and the country is now coming together on this issue. It's been a great thing.”