New poll: Republicans disagree with Trump and want him to debate again

Last Thursday, Donald Trump ruled out a second presidential debate with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Republican voters disagree with him. A new Civiqs poll conducted for Daily Kos poll shows that a plurality of Republican voters (46%) think there should be another debate, while 42% think there shouldn’t.

x Embedded Content But that’s not the only aspect of the debate where Trump and his voters don’t quite see eye to eye. “Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris,” he insisted on his Truth Social platform. Those polls Trump was touting —like a web poll from the far-right outlet Newsmax—aren’t exactly high-quality polls.



But Republicans aren't as enthusiastic about Trump's supposed win as he is. The new Civiqs poll finds that only 66% said Trump won, while 12% said Harris won. That’s a stark difference from Democratic voters' view of the debate: 94% think Harris won, and only 2% think she lost.

Given how polarized America’s politics are, you wouldn’t expect a 28-percentage-point gulf between partisans saying their candidate won a debate. x Embedded Content In other words, Democratic voters felt much better about their candidate’s debate performance than Republicans did about their candidate. Of course, Trump has experience in turning off even his most loyal supporters.

A recent Wall Street Journal article found that people are indeed leaving Trump's rallies early, as Harris claimed and Trump disputed during the debate. And those early exits are likely due to how much time he spends rambling incoherently about things like “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” and how bitter he still is about losing the 2020 election. The New York Times found that at three recent rallies, his speeches averaged over an hour and a half , with folks dipping out the longer he rambled.

“We thought it was our best debate ever—it was my best debate ever, I think, and it was very interesting,” Trump said in the media spin room following the Sept. 10 debate. If that’s the case, maybe Republicans don’t want another debate.

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