What Went Down During The First Presidential Debate

Since May, the share of Americans who said they would get a COVID-19 vaccine when it became available has been declining, according to tracking from YouGov/Yahoo News. Since July, the share of Democrats in particular has declined sharply: Back then, 61 percent said they would get vaccinated compared with 42 percent who said the same in September, a decline of nearly 20 percentage points. In the same time period, the share of Republicans who said they would get a vaccine has declined 12 points, while the share of independents has declined 8 points.

Trump disagreeing with his own medical establishment isn’t necessarily a problem for him. A Quinnipiac poll out last week found a slim majority of Republicans, 51 percent, said they trust Trump over CDC scientists when it comes to information about the coronavirus.

Biden is making one of those direct-to-camera pleas, again on the COVID-19 section, talking about the empty kitchen chairs that Americans might be sitting across from because of coronavirus deaths. And Trump keeps interrupting him. It’s a really odd, disconcerting dynamic. Trump has been making interjections, trying to compare the 206,000 COVID-19 deaths to the swine flu during the Obama administration, which was, obviously, nowhere near as deadly as COVID-19.