State of the Race: A Small Debate Bounce for Harris, but It’s Still Deadlocked

It’s been nearly two weeks since the first presidential debate, and the polls have reached their verdict on the fallout: The race remains very close.

On average, Kamala Harris is faring about one point better across 34 polls that measured the race before and after the debate. It leaves the contest deadlocked, with neither candidate enjoying a meaningful advantage in the key states.

By the usual measures, this is a small post-debate bounce. In fact, it is the smallest bounce for the perceived consensus winner of the first presidential debate so far this century. George W. Bush, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and, yes, Donald J. Trump earlier this year, all peaked with gains of at least two points after their debates.

One possible reason for the smaller bounce is the second assassination attempt on Mr. Trump, though it’s worth noting that most of the polls out this week — including an NBC News poll showing Ms. Harris up five points nationwide — were still mostly taken before the news. On the other hand, the latest New York Times/Siena College polls of the key Sun Belt battlegrounds were taken entirely after the assassination attempt, and they suggest that Ms. Harris may be faring worse there — though it’s too early to say.

Another possible reason is that America is more polarized than ever. Many voters’ views of Mr. Trump, in particular, are all but baked in as he runs for a third time. In addition, many more pollsters today use statistical adjustments — like controlling the makeup of the sample by party identification or how respondents say they voted in the last election — that tend to reduce how much the results swing from week to week.

Still, it’s not as if the polls have been perfectly stable over the last two months since Vice President Harris’s entry into the race. In late July and August, she made steady gains. Those gains seem to have slowed, suggesting she’s mostly consolidated her potential support. Any additional gains won’t be easy. If even a consensus debate victory can’t move the needle, it’s hard to see what would give either candidate a meaningful edge in the polls over the final stretch.