People sit and watch a broadcast of the first presidential debate in West Hollywood, Calif. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
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With the first debate now behind them and 34 days to go till the election, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are back to more standard campaign fare in the heartland.
Betting markets tracked by RealClearPolitics give Biden a 58% chance of winning the White House race vs. Trump’s 42% , a bigger advantage than a day ago, when the former vice president had a 54.5% chance vs. the president’s 45%. It’s also Biden’s largest edge by this metric in more than a month.
Trump’s job in the debate in Cleveland was to “reduce voters’ confidence” in Biden’s “leadership capabilities and mental capacity,” but the Republican incumbent didn’t succeed on that count amid all of the “crosstalk, personal insults and interruptions,” analysts at Height Capital Markets said in a note. “Early reactions to the debate suggest Trump’s performance was a net negative.”
To be sure, other observers viewed Trump as the victor, with conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan tweeting that the president was “dominating” and had successfully heckled his opponent. The U.K.-born Sullivan, who is 57, also described the chaotic debate as the “lowest point in American political culture in my lifetime.”
Related: Trump, Biden blast each other on economy, coronavirus in fiery first debate
Also see: Fox’s Chris Wallace, the moderator, criticized for failing to moderate debate
The Biden campaign said it broke its single-hour fundraising record as the debate unfolded, scoring $3.8 million between 10 p.m. Eastern and 11 p.m. Trump’s re-election campaign, which is lagging in cash on hand, hasn’t announced any fundraising figures tied to the clash in Ohio.
Trump is slated to give a speech at 9 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday at a rally in Duluth, Minn. His re-election campaign has characterized Minnesota as a battleground state that it hopes to win, after the president lost there four years ago by just 1.5 percentage points.
The president tweeted on Wednesday that the debate’s moderator, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, “had a tough night.” He also argued Wallace had helped Biden, saying: “Two on one was not surprising, but fun.”
Biden is expected to take part in a train tour Wednesday with stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania, after he delivered an address in the morning in Cleveland. He said the prior night’s debate and the election are supposed to be about “all the people who make a difference,” but Trump “looks down on us.”
Polling average for top swing states
Source: RealClearPolitics
In a RealClearPolitics moving average of polls focused on top swing states likely to decide the Nov. 3 election, Biden gets support of 48.6% of voters, ahead of Trump’s 45.1%. In RCP’s average of national surveys, the former vice president is at 49.4% vs. the Republican incumbent’s 43.3%.
The stock market
DJIA,
COMP,
was trading higher on Wednesday, while the CBOE Volatility Index
VIX,
moved lower. The S&P 500 index
SPX,
has lost ground this month, but the equity benchmark is still positive for the year after notching an all-time high on Sept. 2.
