Poll Finds Voters in Two Crucial States Repelled by Trump’s Debate Behavior – The New York Times

By overwhelming margins, voters in Pennsylvania and Florida were repelled by President Trump’s conduct in the first general election debate, according to New York Times/Siena College surveys, as Joseph R. Biden Jr. maintained a lead in the two largest battleground states.

Over all, Mr. Biden led by seven percentage points, 49 percent to 42 percent, among likely voters in Pennsylvania. He led by a similar margin, 47-42, among likely voters in Florida.

The surveys began Wednesday, before the early Friday announcement that President Trump had contracted the coronavirus. There was modest evidence of a shift in favor of Mr. Biden in interviews on Friday, including in Arizona where a Times/Siena survey is in progress, after controlling for the demographic and political characteristics of the respondents.

One day of interviews is not enough to evaluate the consequences of a major political development, and it may be several days or longer before even the initial effects of Mr. Trump’s diagnosis can be ascertained by pollsters.

The debates long loomed as one of the president’s best opportunities to reshape the race in his favor. He has trailed in Pennsylvania and Florida from the outset of the campaign, and he does not have many credible paths to the presidency without winning at least one of the two — and probably both.

Instead, a mere 21 percent of likely voters across the two pivotal states said Mr. Trump won the debate Tuesday. It leaves the president at a significant and even daunting disadvantage with a month until Election Day.

In follow-up interviews with half a dozen mainly Republican respondents, none said the president’s coronavirus diagnosis was affecting their voting decision. But some said the debate did affect the way they were thinking about the election, with all but one using the word “bully” to describe the president.

Voters disapproved of the president’s conduct in the debate by a margin of 65 percent to 25 percent. More than half of voters said they strongly disapproved of his conduct.

“I think that Donald Trump acted like a big bully on the stage,” said Cindy Von Waldner, 63, a lifelong Republican from Titusville, Fla. The president began to lose her support when the pandemic hit, and she said she did not believe he took it seriously enough or was transparent enough with the American people. She said she would most likely vote for Mr. Biden, her first time casting a Democratic ballot.

The revulsion against Mr. Trump’s performance extended well into his reliable base. One-third of the president’s supporters said they disapproved of his performance, including 11 percent who did so strongly. A modest but potentially significant 8 percent of people who backed him in the survey said the debate made them less likely to support Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

The debate didn’t change the mind of Peralte Roseme, a 35-year-old independent in West Palm Beach, Fla, who voted for President Obama and now plans to vote for Mr. Trump. Mr. Roseme, who is Black, said it felt “horrible” that Mr. Trump refused to directly condemn white supremacists and told one far-right group to “stand by,” but he supported Mr. Trump in the survey.

“I don’t think he’s racist or anything like that,” he said of Mr. Trump. Instead, he said he thought Mr. Trump was thinking: “I just don’t want to lose votes. These are people in my corner; why would I put them down?”

In a direct comparison with a Times/Siena survey of Pennsylvania conducted before the debate, the president’s personal ratings slumped across the board. The share of voters who thought Mr. Trump had the temperament and personality to be president dropped by more than a net 10 percentage points.

The president and his allies had long argued that Mr. Biden would disqualify himself with a poor performance in the debates, creating an opening for the president to reassemble his winning coalition. But Pennsylvania voters were about as likely to say Mr. Biden had the mental sharpness to serve effectively as president as they were before the debate. More voters said Mr. Trump didn’t have the mental sharpness it takes than said the same of Mr. Biden.