Undecided voters lean towards decision after Harris-Trump debate

Former President Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris took to the debate stage for the first time together on Tuesday.

For nearly two hours, the pair sparred over abortion access, immigration, and the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

With only weeks left until the US presidential election, the candidates are in a battle for the remaining undecided voters.

The BBC spoke to some of them who considered the debate crucial in determining who they will support in November.

We start with a voter who, hesitatingly, supports the former president.

This voter was leaning towards Trump before the debate started and is still leaning that way, but was impressed with Harris’s performance.

I don’t think the debate changed my opinion on voting for Trump, but I definitely am less fearful if [Harris] wins because I think she can handle herself and debate well.

I’m overall unchanged, but I like her better now.

I lost a lot of faith in the Democratic Party when they told us Joe Biden was fine, and then it turns out he’s not, and so it’s hard to trust that same administration going forward.

I do not want to vote for Trump, but I do not like this current administration. I won’t change my mind before November, I’d just be less worried if she were to win.

This voter doesn’t like Trump and didn’t vote for either Democrat in 2016 or 2020, but after tonight’s debate he will be voting for Harris.

Tonight was the first night where genuinely, I would say I felt, like, scared at the prospect of a second Trump presidency.

His answers where he would fear monger about immigrants killing dogs, fear monger about World War III multiple times. Every time he spoke, it was frightening to a level that I have not felt from him before.

And while I don’t love Harris, and I think she’s very wishy-washy, she does not pose an existential threat to America like he does.

This voter will definitely be voting for Trump or Harris come November, she just hasn’t decided.

I thought both candidates spoke fairly well, but I thought Kamala answered more of the questions than Trump did.

I had never really seen anything about [Harris] so I was looking for basically an opinion on her. So I was rather pleased with some of what she had to say and actually what ex-President Trump had to say, but I get a very shifty vibe from him.

I don’t trust [Trump]. I don’t think he wants to run the country, I think he wants to own the country.

This voter thought the debate captured a clear picture of both candidates, but is leaning towards Harris after the debate.

Trump was all over the place. He was lured into a lot of questions that he should have answered perfectly like immigration and abortion, but he was caught off guard with statements about crowd size, which was really revealing.

I felt like Kamala was far more prepared for this than Donald Trump.

I personally want to see her in more one-on-one interviews after this, this is the first time I’m seeing her without Tim Walz and she did fine, in my opinion.

If she went out there more, spoke to the nation one-on-one more, she’d receive my vote at that point.

This voter remains undecided, but says after the debate he’s 51% Harris, 49% Trump. Still, he says, there’s still time for that to change.

The debate did very little to change my perspective of Trump. This was more an audition for Kamala Harris to just kind of see who she is, where she stands on policies and her command of the stage.

She came across pretty rehearsed to me, but she dropped a lot of, sort of, baited statements that I think Trump bit on really hard – rattled him a bit, made him pretty angry.

All of this seemed pretty calculated to me, and that’s not exactly what I was looking for out of her. I was looking for her to be a little more personable, a little more natural.