Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump faced off in what was the second (and perhaps final) presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle. With students across campus tuning in as part of watch parties or from the comfort of their dorms, I was curious to hear what Brandeisians thought about the candidates’ performances. Thus, I set off to gather the opinions of my peers in a brief survey.
My survey was made up of three questions: Who did you think won the debate? (Or neither). Why do you think that candidate won the debate? (Or neither). And finally, were there any issues or topics you felt the candidates should have discussed more? Results were gathered in two ways. First, through “street” interviews, as I stood outside the SCC and Usdan flagging down random students to survey on Sunday, Sept. 15 and Monday, Sept. 16. Second, through a poster with a QR linking to an online version of the survey posted at the SCC, Usdan and across campus that was open from Thursday, Sept. 12 to Tuesday, Sept. 17. Students were given the option to give their name or remain anonymous in both formats.
So, what did Brandeisians have to say?
Out of 101 students surveyed, 92 said they believed Harris had won the debate, 9 said they believed neither candidate had won the debate and zero students said they believed Trump had won the debate. Clearly the vast majority believed Harris to be the winner. Why?
Students were very attuned to the difference in composure between the candidates. While the top three most common descriptors of Harris’ performance were presidential, composed and coherent, Trump’s top three were ranting, rambling and incoherent. This is not without precedent. As one anonymous student explained, Trump has a distinct debate strategy of talking over people and calling names. Noah Simon ’25 argued that Harris was able to hold herself together without falling into the traps set by Former President Trump that President Biden and Secretary Clinton did when they debated him. Helena Clare ’28 candidly noted that while Harris was composed, Trump did “what he usually does”.
This leads us into the next reason that Harris has been proclaimed the victor: strategy. From the start, Harris’s fourth-most common descriptor, preparedness, was apparent to students. President of the Brandeis Democrats, Mandy Feuerman ’25, emphasized that Harris came into the debate with “a vision for a better America”. Matthew Pfeffer ’27 believed Harris to be better trained for the debate because she was more open to taking advice from her advisors. Because she knew her opponent, an anonymous student observed, she was able to correctly predict how Trump would respond and was thus able to control the conversation. 

This most acutely manifested in what many students labeled as Harris successfully “baiting” Trump. For example, an anonymous student singled out Harris’ remark about the size of Trump’s rallies and people leaving them early. Knowing Trump’s weaknesses, Nick Chang ’27 said, “diverted him away from issues he has been expected to have advantages on, like immigration.” Alex Leber ’28 pointed out that Trump might have done much better if he attacked her on policy rather than defending his character. Instead, Jameer Gomez-Santos ’26 stated “he used his time very inefficiently.”
The final dominant reason students believed Kamala Harris to have come out on top had less to do with a good showing from her, but a bad one from Donald Trump. One anonymous student called his behavior “insanity” and another “manic”. Donald Trump’s outlandish references to immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating cats and dogs, illegal immigrants getting transgender operations in prisons, 10 month post-birth abortions, his expertise in fertilization and having involvement with the Taliban were widely panned by students. These statements also exposed weaknesses for Trump. Catherine Shi ’25 noted that Trump’s “I have concepts of a plan” (in relation to healthcare) signaled he didn’t have specific policy. It also, as Ross Vine ’27 explained, allowed Harris to present a moderate alternative to GOP swing voters who wanted “rationality rather than fear mongering”. In contextualizing Trump’s failings, one anonymous student simply quoted President Ronald Reagan, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing”. 

While the vast majority of those surveyed believed that Harris had won, there were still some that believed neither candidate had won. Their reasons varied, but there were a few specific commonalities. Esther Levin ’26 believed that the debate was an exercise in exciting voter bases rather than winning over independent voters that decide the election. Similarly, an anonymous student reasoned that the debate was not going to change minds because Trump acted predictably and Harris accomplished “the bare minimum”. Two anonymous students challenged the concept of it being possible to “win” the debate in the first place, and that the debate was moreso about introducing candidates than a term subjective as “winning”. 
Due to the raucous nature of the debate, truth was a universally important topic. Most students agreed that Harris spoke much more factually than Trump. Katherine Bulthuis ’27 highlighted that Harris “relied on logic and facts rather than sensationalism and showmanship”. However, this was not without contention. Several students agreed with Donald Trump’s assertion that the debate was a “3 versus 1” due to fact-checking biases on the part of the moderators and hosting network, ABC. One anonymous student who believed neither candidate to have won the debate contended that because, “Kamala wasn’t fact checked throughout the debate, [it made] it seem as if every single thing that came out of her mouth was the truth, when it, in fact, was not”. Others, like Andrew Zeilder ’25 took an entirely different stance, believing that it was Trump who should have been fact checked more. “They allowed Trump to get away with too much,” Zeilder wrote on the online survey, “and in doing so, have given a platform to more of his unhinged theories.”
Many students also shared agreement in disappointment that both candidates avoided answering questions directly or with specific policy. On a myriad of issues, most commonly  immigration, Israel/Palestine and the economy, students wanted to hear the details of concrete plans on how the candidates would address these topics. By far though, climate change proved to be the number one issue students wanted to hear more about. One anonymous student from Pennsylvania expressed their frustration with both candidates’s support of fracking in a bid to win their home state. To a different anonymous student, Harris’ answer on climate change proved particularly disappointing as she pivoted towards labor instead of giving a full answer.
Overall, Harris’ debate performance received a very warm reception here at Brandeis. Though she had areas for improvement according to students, her margin of victory in the survey paints an entirely different picture than the situation facing voters in the roughly two and a half months since the last debate. This concludes my coverage of student reactions to the Sept. 10 presidential debate. Thank you to everyone that participated in my survey!