'Clean sweep': Focus group of swing state voters who watched debate names their top choice

11 September 2024

Republican political strategist Sarah Longwell — publisher of conservative media outlet The Bulwark — recently conducted a focus group of voters in battleground states who watched the debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. The results showed the group identified a clear winner.

In a series of tweets, Longwell revealed that her focus group agreed "across the board" that "Harris won the debate." She didn't identify the states participants in the focus group lived in or their party registration, but that they were "swing voters from swing states," suggesting it included people who voted both for and against Trump over the last two election cycles in closely divided states that flipped from red to blue in recent elections (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all meet those criteria).

"7 feel worse about Trump, 2 feel no change after the debate," she tweeted. "8 feel better about Harris, 1 feels no change after the debate."

"Clean sweep for Harris with these voters," she added. "Three had previously been leaning RFK over Harris back in June when we talked to them."

In his reaction to the debate, far-right pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted that "this debate won't matter." He asserted that "the American people still know nothing about Kamala Harris' positions" and that "Donald Trump is still Donald Trump."

Longwell, who is the founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, countered that with an observation of her own. She made it clear she is adamantly opposed to the former president. However, she also acknowledged that President Joe Biden did poorly in his own CNN debate with Trump in June, and that his poor performance on the stage ultimately cost him his reelection campaign.

"I watched Biden bomb the last debate in front of a large, live audience. I was on a panel with a couple Dem pollster/operative types giving our post-debate reactions. They, too, argued, 'Debates don’t matter,'" she tweeted. "There is no more obvious cope when your guy goes down in flames."

The debate was full of huge moments for Harris, who repeatedly baited Trump with jabs about his campaign rallies, foreign leaders' ability to manipulate him and the fact that numerous former Trump cabinet officials have since come out publicly against him.

In a call to Fox News on Wednesday morning, the former president complained about ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checking him in real time and suggested the network's broadcast license should be revoked. In several instances, Muir and Davis countered Trump's lies about the 2020 election, reminding him that he not only lost to President Joe Biden but that roughly 60 lawsuits his campaign filed in the wake of the election were unsuccessful.

ABC's moderators also didn't let Trump's baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pets go unchallenged. Muir reminded Trump that the city manager of Springfield has said there was no evidence backing up that claim. Even Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who initially spread the rumor, acknowledged earlier Tuesday that those claims "may turn out to be false."

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