POLITICS: Over a week has passed since last Tuesday’s tumultuous debate between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, several moments of which have circulated extensively, making an impression on millions of Americans. Although Salisbury University is considered an apolitical campus, many students watched the debate on Sept. 10th or in the days following, with clashing views on who won and how the debate impacted their perceptions. 

In the course of the two-hour long ABC debate, the commentators posed questions ranging from the state of the economy and rising inflation to abortion access and damning remarks made by the candidates. To gauge the political opinions of SU students, several dozen random respondents were asked to answer debate-related questions anonymously in a survey created by The Bury Post. 

The general consensus is that Kamala Harris was the victor of the night. 80% of SU students believe Harris won, whereas a mere 20% think Trump prevailed. Of the respondents questioned, about 71% thought the commentators gave fair questions and 29% viewed the questions as being unfair.  

Notably, the results demonstrated that a vast majority of students who watched the debate did not have their voting decisions swayed: not a single student responded that the performance altered who they’d be supporting on Nov. 5th, showcasing the fact that most people have already made up their minds about both Harris and Trump. 

Leonard Robinson, who has a doctorate in Political Studies, is the Director of International Studies and has been teaching at Salisbury University since 1998. He believes that Trump’s inability to control himself during the debate and Harris’ arguable command of the stage contributed to her performance victory. 

“[Trump] had an opportunity that he missed multiple times, to launch effective attacks against Harris, and going off on all these crazy tangents.”

However, Robinson does not believe that the debate will have any considerable impact on the results of the election. Similar to what the aforementioned survey demonstrates, he explained that most voters have already made up their minds about who they’ll support. 

“I don’t think it’s going to have much of an impact, I really don’t know how many voters there are at this point who are genuinely undecided,” he said. “[Although] it might move the needle a little bit with voters who are undecided because she won so clearly.”

Robinson guesses that, based on national trends of youth voting Democratic, the majority of SU students will likely vote for Harris, although it also depends on the field of study which the students are pursuing (Liberal Arts majors may be more likely to vote Blue, whereas Business majors may be more likely to vote Red). 

Of those who responded, 57.1% of SU students plan to vote for Kamala Harris, 19% intend to vote for Trump, while the remaining 23.9% are either undecided or will vote for a 3rd party candidate. 

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COLIN McEVERS contributed to this report

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Featured image courtesy of NBC News