Harris won the debate -- and it wasn't close

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

48% : But voters got their first look at Harris going toe-to-toe with Trump, and she did more than hold her own.
44% : Through body language, her decision to force a handshake with Trump and snippets of unmuted moments, Harris communicated all she needed about her opponent -- underlining the moments when she baited him into his more off-the-rails comments.
42% : Trump might want a mulligan, but it's difficult to see how his advisers would want to go through something like that again.
42% : Swift didn't call Trump the Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, but she might as well have.
42% : But on a number of occasions -- most notably citing television reports about the pet-eating immigrants allegedly overrunning a town in Ohio -- Trump underlined some of the attributes that voters don't like about him, as Harris cleared the bar of reasonableness.
40% : In the New York Times/Siena College poll this week, roughly equal percentages of likely voters (52 percent for Harris and 54 percent for Trump) saw each candidate as a "risky choice."
39% : Her goals for it were clear: Draw a contrast with Trump by casting herself as the change candidate who could move voters into the future.
39% : For Trump, everything he did tonight is what voters are probably used to for him, whether they like it or not.
36% : And while we're talking about Vance: He had somewhat of a rough night, with Trump essentially conceding they had different views on abortion ("I didn't discuss it with JD, in all fairness, and I don't mind if he has a certain view...")
36% : Trump brought it up over and over, she was asked directly about some of those from Linsey Davis and the folks who still have questions are left with "my values haven't changed."
33% : Throughout the debate, Harris spoke directly into the camera, urging voters to "turn the page" on Trump.
33% : She showed up as her prosecutorial self, effectively putting Trump in the witness stand throughout much of the debate.
33% : And Trump didn't dig in on one of his key lines of attack -- why Harris hasn't done the things she's promising during her three years as vice president -- until the end of the night.
32% : Trump and his backers went into this debate casting doubt on whether ABC's moderators would treat him fairly.
32% : Wren: I'll remember Trump engaging in the debunked conspiracy of animal eating in Springfield, Ohio -- a low water mark of this conspiracy laden era.
32% : But if we're talking about damaging sound bites: Trump saying he only has "concepts of a plan" on health care is one that Democrats can play on loop.
29% : The abortion segment was brutal for Trump, and he only made it worse for himself by distancing himself from his own running mate.
29% : Harris, the lead on abortion for Democrats for years and Trump who got three Supreme Court picks who knocked down Roe.
27% : A debate that began with a question that should favor Trump -- are Americans better off economically than they were four years ago -- quickly turned against the former president.
27% : Even when the debate returned to the friendly terrain of immigration, Harris set a trap for Trump that had him talking about the size of crowds at his campaign rallies and fever-swamp tales of abducted pets in short order -- and at an increasing volume that made it clear he knew things were not going his way.
27% : It was a strange conspiracy theory before the debate and it played out even stranger on the debate stage with Trump going back and forth with David Muir on whether immigrants are eating pets (there's zero evidence this is happening.)
22% : She got in his head from then on.Democrats watching texted me that this is exactly the reason they wanted the switch from Biden to Harris: a candidate that could actually make the case against Trump.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.