CNN
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Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s presidential debate broadly agree that Kamala Harris performed better than Donald Trump, according to a CNN poll of debate viewers conducted by SSRS. The vice president also exceeded both debate viewers’ expectations for her and Joe Biden’s onstage performances against the former president earlier this year, the poll found.

Debate viewers said Harris performed better on stage in Philadelphia, 63% to 37%. Before the debate, the same voters were evenly divided over which candidate would do better, with 50% saying Harris would and 50% saying Trump would. And afterward, 96% of Harris supporters who watched said their chosen candidate had done a better job, while a smaller majority of Trump supporters, 69%, gave him credit for having a better night.

Voters who watched the debate also left with an improved opinion of Harris compared to their pre-debate impressions, while few changed their opinions of Trump overall. Their views on each candidate’s strengths on the issues continued to reflect the dynamics seen in national polls, with Trump ahead on the economy, immigration and commander-in-chief, and Harris more confident on abortion and protecting democracy.

The vast majority of viewers said it had no effect on their presidential decision. However, among debate viewers, Trump supporters were more likely than Harris supporters to say the event gave them reason to reconsider their decision.

The flash poll results mark a shift from the response to the June presidential debate, when voters who watched the Trump-Biden showdown said Trump outperformed his Democratic rival by 67% to 33%. That June debate marked a rare presidential debate victory for Trump: in 2020 and 2016, Biden and Hillary Clinton were seen by debate watchers as outperforming him in the presidential debates.

The poll results reflect only the opinions of voters who tuned in to the debate and are not representative of the entire voting public. Debate viewers in the poll were 6 points more likely to be Republican-leaning than Democratic-leaning, which translates to an audience that was about 4 percentage points more GOP-leaning than all registered voters nationwide.

By the end of the night, debate audiences reported split opinions of Harris, with 45% saying they viewed her favorably and 44% unfavorably. That’s an improvement from before the debate, when 39% of the same voters said they viewed her favorably. Meanwhile, debate audiences’ opinions of Trump barely changed, with 39% viewing him favorably and 51% unfavorably after the debate, similar to his numbers among the same voters before he took the stage.

Among voters who watched the debate and considered themselves politically independent, Harris’s popularity rose to 48% after the debate, compared to just 30% before.

Identical shares of debate viewers, 54%, said they had at least some confidence in Harris’ and Trump’s respective abilities to lead the country, with 36% saying they had a lot of confidence in Trump and 32% saying they had a lot of confidence in Harris. In June, just 14% of those who tuned in to the Trump-Biden presidential debate said they had a lot of confidence in Biden’s ability to lead.

After the final debate, voters who tuned in were split on which candidate better understands the issues facing people like them, with 44% saying Harris does and 40% choosing Trump. That marks a shift in Harris’ advantage from before the debate, when 43% said Trump understands their issues better, while 39% said Harris does. But voters who tuned in gave Trump a 20-point edge over Harris after the debate on handling the economy, 55% to 35% — a margin slightly larger than his pre-debate lead.

Debate viewers also gave Trump a 23-point edge over Harris when it came to who they trusted to handle immigration and a 6-point edge on filling the role of commander in chief. But they gave Harris a 9-point edge on protecting democracy and a 21-point edge on who they trusted to handle the abortion issue.

An 82% majority of registered voters who watched Tuesday night’s debate said it did not influence their choice of president. Another 14% said it made them think but not change their minds, and 4% said it changed their minds about who they would vote for. Debate viewers who supported Trump before Tuesday night were more likely than those who supported Harris to say they were undecided after the debate, 23% versus 12%.

The CNN poll was conducted via text message among 605 registered U.S. voters who said they watched Tuesday’s debate, and the poll’s findings are representative of the opinions of debate viewers only. Respondents were recruited to participate before the debate and were selected through a survey of members of the SSRS Opinion Panel, a nationally representative panel recruited using probability-based sampling techniques. Results for the full sample of debate viewers have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.

CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.