More Americans said Sen. Kamala Harris did the best job in the vice presidential debate Wednesday night, according to a CNN Instant Poll of registered voters who watched.
About 6 in 10 (59%) said Harris won, while 38% said Vice President Mike Pence had the better night.
Those results roughly matched voters’ expectations heading into the debate. In interviews conducted before the debate, 61% of those same voters said they expected Harris to win, 36% thought Pence would.
Harris did improve her favorability rating among those who watched, according to the poll, while the debate was a wash for Pence. In pre-debate interviews, 56% said they had a positive view of Harris, that rose to 63% after the debate. For Pence, his favorability stood at 41% in both pre- and post-debate interviews.
Both vice presidential candidates are broadly seen as qualified to be president: 65% said Pence is qualified to serve as commander in chief should that become necessary, 63% said the same of Harris.
The CNN post-debate poll was conducted by SSRS by telephone and includes interviews with 609 registered voters who watched the October 7 vice presidential debate. Results among debate-watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points. Respondents were originally interviewed September 30 to October 4 either by telephone or online, and indicated they planned to watch the debate and would be willing to be re-interviewed when it was over. Respondents initially reached online are members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative probability-based panel.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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