All the signs Trump lost the debate

[Thiệu Ngô]

Donald Trump is boasting that he won the debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
But the former president's actions show he doesn't truly believe that.
By Wednesday afternoon, Trump's words were far from the only sign of his defeat.

Analysis by Brent D. Griffiths

It was a bad sign for former President Donald Trump when his campaign declared victory while his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was still happening.

Like his premature declaration in the wee hours after Election Day 2020, it gave off an aura of desperation, not confidence.

By Wednesday morning, there were abundant signs that Trump lost his debate against Harris. By most indications, it wasn't even that close.

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Despite the fierce reputation he forged in GOP primary debates, Trump has struggled in general-election faceoffs. Polls famously showed he lost all three debates against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. His first debate against former Vice President Joe Biden in 2020 is widely regarded as one of his worst debate performances ever.

It remains to be seen how much Tuesday's debate will matter. Research has shown that debates affect elections only slightly, but even in an age of close races, Trump and Harris remain separated by the thinnest of margins in the small number of swing states that will decide the presidency.

Trump, of course, still won the White House in 2016 despite his struggles against Clinton. But once again, he has, largely by his own doing, put his campaign in a difficult spot.

Here are the signs that Trump added to his debate-loss total.

The prediction markets gave Harris a slight edge

Heading into the debate, Trump held a narrow lead on PolyMarket, a crypto-based betting market that counts the election forecaster Nate Silver as one of its advisors. By the end of the 90-minute face-off, Harris emerged as the favorite for the first time in over two weeks. Her lead did not last long, though — by Wednesday afternoon, Trump was narrowly ahead again.

Prediction markets are far from perfect. Vox reported that in 2020, traders on PredictIt, one of PolyMarket's competitors, at one point gave Clinton the third-highest chance of winning the Democratic nomination even though she wasn't running.

Prediction markets operate on shaky legal ground in the US, so their user bases may not accurately reflect the opinions of the wider population. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives, has gone back and forth with PredictIt over its operation. In May, the government regulator moved to explicitly ban de facto betting on politics entirely.

There are some benefits to prediction markets. Traditional high-quality polling is less responsive to real-world events that shape elections. Such events can bedevil pollsters if they occur while a survey is already in the works, potentially leading to a sample of voters that come to the table with very different experiences.

Trump's beloved stock market isn't any better

The stock market may be an even better measure than the prediction markets. Because of Trump's willingness to mix his business with politics, his initials are once again a publicly tradeable asset. Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, were down on Wednesday.

Traders have shown that they will sell off shares in the struggling company when there's negative news about Trump.

CNN's poll showed Trump lost by a wide margin

To compensate for the lag time in traditional polling, TV networks often conduct so-called "snap" or "flash" polls right after the debates to catch debate watchers. By design, the poll only includes voters who watched the debate — leaving out many Americans who vote but might not have watched it or only watched some of it. Historically, such polls also may reflect a bias of supporters who feel like their candidate won the debate.

That being said, CNN's flash poll found that Harris won the debate by a 63% to 37% margin. Not long after the debate, Trump began posting screenshots on Truth Social of unscientific polls conducted on X. Trump has long loved these types of straw-poll surveys.

The Murdoch media empire also wasn't pleased

Rupert Murdoch-owned media properties couldn't avoid broadcasting signs of Harris' victory.

In the immediate aftermath, Brit Hume, Fox News' chief political analyst, declared on the network, "Make no mistake about it. Trump had a bad night."

The New York Post's front page blared a headline that described Trump as "rattled."

And The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, long considered the voice of the establishment wing of the GOP, deemed Harris the winner as well.

"Ms. Harris, less well known than the former President, had the most to gain and our guess is she helped herself. She clearly won the debate, though not because she made a powerful case for her vision or the record of the last four years," the editorial board wrote.

Instead, the board concluded, Harris won by simply goading Trump.

"Harris set the trap so he spent much of the debate talking about the past, or about Joe Biden, or about immigrants eating pets, but not how he'd improve the lives of Americans in the next four years."

Trump and his allies blamed ABC

Before the debate ended, Trump's campaign officials were lashing out at the debate moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, for their real-time debunking of some of Trump's claims.

"3 on 1, just as expected," Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, wrote on X during the debate.

Donald Trump Jr., Trump's eldest son, added: "Weird how the hack moderators at @abcnews are only "Fact checking" Trump and allowing Kamala to lie nonstop. The Fake News is the enemy of the people!"

Their complaints came across as those of a frustrated coach lashing out at the officials instead of accepting their team's culpability in a loss.

Look what it made Taylor Swift do

Taylor Swift, the biggest star on the planet, came off the sidelines and endorsed Harris minutes after the debate ended. Swift's support was always expected, but her silence led some fans to theorize that she might stay out of the 2024 race.

The fact she announced her endorsement right after the debate only added to the narrative that Democrats were ready to spike the football. For what it's worth, Harris' campaign claimed it was surprised by the timing of Swift's announcement.

Trump is backing away from a rematch

Before Biden dropped out of the race, Trump needled the president for months over debates. Amid a back and forth with Harris over debates, Trump declared that he wanted three face-offs with her. Some Trump allies are still floating the possibility that another debate will happen.

But for now, Trump is running away from his former bravado — boasting like Apollo Creed that there "ain't gonna be no rematch."

"In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, "I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!" Well, it's no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night," Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon. "Every Poll has us WINNING, in one case, 92-8, so why would I do a Rematch?"

Later in the day, Trump appeared to be walking back from his retreat, indicating he might debate again. According to NBC News, the former president said he would accept a debate on either NBC or Fox News.