Former US president Donald Trump said on Thursday he would not participate in another presidential debate against Kamala Harris ahead of the Nov. 5 election, after some polls showed his Democratic rival won their debate earlier this week.
“THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” the Republican nominee wrote on the social media site Truth Social. “We just don’t think that there’s any need for it,” Trump told the New York Post. “We’ve done two. You know, one against Biden [on June 27], one against Comrade Kamala. I did well. I did really well,” the 78-year-old said during a phone interview.
“The debate polls, every single poll, had us winning it.” Speaking at a rally shortly after Trump’s post went live, Harris said: “I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate.” While Trump said in his post that polls showed he won the debate, several surveys showed that respondents thought Harris did better.
What Polls Say
Most debate watchers said Harris outperformed Trump, according to a CNN poll released shortly after the debate. YouGov showed 54% of those surveyed said Harris won while 31% said Trump was the victor. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Thursday, Harris leads Trump 47% to 42% in the race to win the Nov. 5 presidential election, increasing her advantage after a debate against the former president that voters largely think she won.
The two-day poll showed Harris with a five percentage point lead among registered voters, just above the four-point advantage she had over Trump in an Aug. 21-28 Reuters/Ipsos poll. Among voters who said they had heard at least something about Tuesday’s debate, 53% said Harris won and 24% said Trump won, with the rest saying neither had or not answering. Some 52% of those familiar with the debate said Trump stumbled and didn’t appear sharp, while 21% said that of Harris. Among Republican voters, one in five said Trump didn’t appear sharp.
Harris Vs Trump
Harris put Trump on the defensive in a combative presidential debate in Philadelphia. Some 52% of voters familiar with the debate said Harris “gave the impression of having higher moral integrity,” compared to 29% who said the same of Trump. Meanwhile, some 53% of Republican voters in the poll said Trump won the debate, compared to 91% of Democrats who said she was the victor. Among Republicans, 31% said no one won and 14% said Harris got the better of Trump.
Ninety-one percent of registered voters in the poll said they had heard at least something of the debate and 44% said they had heard a great deal. The debate, hosted by ABC News, attracted 67.1 million television viewers, according to Nielsen data, topping the roughly 51 million people who watched Trump debate then-candidate President Joe Biden in June. Biden’s disastrous performance in that debate led to widespread calls by the 81-year-old leader’s fellow Democrats for him to drop his re-election bid, which he did in July.
(With agency inputs)
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