President Joe Biden got off to a slow start in the debate, but swing voters were turned off by Donald Trump.

David Plouffe provided a bit of insight into how Trump’s debate performance polled with focus groups:

All you can do if you’re a Democrat is ask yourself what I can do, which is, yeah, we missed an opportunity here tonight, a significant opportunity, but it’s still a close race and you’re running against Donald Trump. And again, I think this will come out. But, you know, I’ve talked to people who are doing dial groups and focus groups with folk with swing voters And as much as they were concerned about Biden’s performance and they were, uh you know, they weren’t, no one was saying I’m really excited about Donald Trump coming back to the presidency. He, he reconfirmed all the reasons they voted against him in 2020. And again, I look at that as a huge missed opportunity.

Video:

David Plouffe says Trump’s debate performance did poorly with swing voters in focus groups, “No one was saying I am really excited about Donald Trump coming back
to the presidency. He reconfirmed all the reasons they voted against him in 2020.” pic.twitter.com/ec94g9yCFC

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) June 28, 2024

A missed opportunity is a good way to view this debate for Democrats. Trump started out trying to be lucid, but that was gone after about 20 minutes, and by the end of the debate Trump was incoherently rambling about dementia tests and golf.

On the other hand, Biden started out poorly, but at around the same time that Trump began to slide, the President got better.

Trump doubled down on appealing just to Republicans and his schtick went over poorly with focus groups. Donald Trump bombed this debate. Republicans and his supporters are likely thrilled, but all he did for swing voters was remind them of why the voted him out of office four years ago.

The overall result of this debate is that it likely didn’t change much of anything, but Biden has an opening with the swing voters that Trump has alienated.