President Joe Biden's performance in the first presidential debate is fueling well-documented concerns about his fitness for office, but a new poll suggests the face-off with former President Donald Trump isn’t significantly changing voters’ minds in a dead heat race. 538 and Ipsos polled the same likely voters both before and after the debate.
It’s a potential sign that the face-off influenced some voters to shop for an alternative, although those increases were within the poll’s margin of error and third-party candidates are still trailing both Trump and Biden significantly. “It’s a wait-and-see moment, and we have to wait a few weeks, at the very least, to see if there is an impact,” Young added. In the meantime, Democrats are doing damage control as the campaign tries to tamp down talks of replacing Biden at the top of the ticket.