Not a single voter who participated in a Fox News Digital focus group said they felt better about President Biden after watching his performance at the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Democrats, independents and Republicans who gave their real-time reaction to the debate said that former President Trump appeared stronger than Biden when it came to effective communication and the ability to appear like a leader.<\/p>\n
\u2018He got off to a horrible start,\u2019 a male voter told focus group leader Lee Carter, president of Maslansky and Partners. \u2018At the beginning he couldn\u2019t even put a sentence together at the opening statement.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
One woman expressed disappointment in the debate, noting that Biden and Trump spent more time attacking each other\u2019s records than discussing the problems facing the country.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think they\u2019re just battling each other, like, head on and not addressing the real problems. Like, they\u2019re just trying to be on top of each other. It just felt like, I don\u2019t know, a fist fight to me,\u2019 she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A man who said he was \u2018okay\u2019 with Biden\u2019s performance suggested the president would have been helped if his microphone was closer to his mouth. Biden\u2019s voice appeared raspy during the debate and at times he did not project at the level of his opponent, Trump.<\/p>\n
But another woman interjected, saying that Biden, as an executive, should be able to project and communicate his points. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Given that he was one of the earliest, as you mentioned, senators and has been in politics for decades, I don\u2019t think that is an excuse,\u2019 she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another male voter compared the physical presence of the two candidates and said Trump had an edge over the 81-year-old Biden.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Okay, you just take Trump versus Biden on the physical and the ability to communicate: Trump is 78 years old also, but he is communicating as if he was 55 years old, and he\u2019s getting his points across, and he\u2019s acting like a leader,\u2019 a male voter said.<\/p>\n
At the onset of the discussion, about half of the focus group indicated they had concerns about Trump going into the debate. Voters said they were worried he would not act presidential, or that he would be too \u2018aggressive\u2019 in going after Biden.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than half of the focus group later said Trump exceeded their expectations. Several said the debate format, in which a candidate\u2019s microphone was muted when it wasn\u2019t their turn to speak, ultimately helped Trump maintain composure and control.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think they meant to help Biden but they ended up helping Trump,\u2019 one voter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Because they shut him up.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
Not a single voter who participated in a Fox News Digital focus group said they felt better about President Biden after watching his performance at the CNN Presidential Debate on Thursday. Democrats, independents and Republicans who gave their real-time reaction to the debate said that former President Trump appeared stronger than Biden when it came <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":20316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}