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SurveyMonkey poll: Trump improves, but not enough

24 October 2020
Dan Ackermann

President Trump's final debate performance exceeded Americans' expectations, but it wasn't enough to shift the dynamics that left him trailing Joe Biden across most measures, according to a new Axios-SurveyMonkey poll.

What they're saying: "Liar" was the word used most by debate watchers to describe Trump's performance, followed by "lies," "strong," "presidential" and "childish." "Presidential" was the word used most to describe Biden's performance, followed by "liar," "weak," "expected" and "honest."

  • "Informative" and "Trump" led the descriptions of the debate itself, followed by "Biden," "civil" and "boring."
Trump word cloud. Graphic: SurveyMonkey

The big picture: Biden's favorable-unfavorable rating among U.S. adults is at 46-45% after the debate, while President Trump's is 10 percentage points underwater, at 42%-52%, with a week and a half remaining in the race.

  • Among independents, Biden's favorable ratings have climbed into positive territory, jumping 18 percentage points to +4 since the first debate on Sept. 29. Trump climbed seven percentage points with independents, but that still leaves him at -27.
Biden word cloud. Graphic: SurveyMonkey

By the numbers: 44% of debate watchers — and 73% of Republicans — said Trump did better than they expected. Only 11% overall said he did worse than they expected.

  • But Biden was more trusted than Trump on five of seven issues covered in the debate: the coronavirus (48%-36%), the environment (50%-31%), issues of special concern to women (48%-30%), ethics in government (47%-36%) and issues of special concern to Black Americans (44%-37%).
  • Foreign policy (44%-43%) and crime/safety (41%-43%) were essentially a draw between Biden and Trump.

The intrigue: Is the mute button here to stay?

  • 64% of debate watchers, including a slim majority of Republicans, said allowing the muting of candidates' microphones made the debate better.

Methodology: This SurveyMonkey online poll was conducted October 22-23, 2020 among a national sample of 2,742 U.S. adults, including 2,322 who watched the debate or followed coverage of it.

  • Respondents for this survey were selected from the more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day.
  • The modeled error estimate for this survey is +/- 3.0 percentage points. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States age 18 and over.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.