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By Helen Coster and Tim Reid
(Reuters) – Kamala Harris was widely seen as dominating Tuesday’s presidential debate against Republican former president Donald Trump, but a group of undecided voters remained unconvinced that the Democratic vice president was the better candidate.
Reuters interviewed 10 people who were still unsure how they were going to vote in the Nov. 5 election before they watched the debate. Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote.
Harris and Trump are in a tight race and the election will likely be decided by just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, many of whom are swing voters like the undecided voters who spoke to Reuters.
Although the sample size was small, the responses suggested Harris might need to provide more detailed policy proposals to win over voters who have yet to make up their minds.
Five said they found Harris vague during the more than 90-minute debate on how she would improve the U.S. economy and deal with the high cost of living, a top concern for voters.
The encounter was particularly important for Harris, with a weekend New York Times/Siena College opinion poll showing that more than a quarter of likely voters feel they do not know enough about her, in contrast to the well-known Trump.
The Trump converts said they trusted him more on the economy, even though all said they did not like him as a person. They said their personal financial situation had been better when he was president between 2017-2021. Some singled out his proposal to tax foreign imports, although economists say that is likely to raise prices.
Four of those six also said Harris did not convince them she would pursue different economic policies than Democratic President Joe Biden, a Democrat they largely blame for the high cost of living.
“I still don’t know what she is for,” said Mark Kadish, 61, an entrepreneur in Florida. “There was no real meat and bones for her plans.”
Four of the voters are women and six are men; eight are white and two are Black. All have voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates in the past.
Harris did mention some policy specifics, including her plan to offer tax benefits to families and small businesses. But she focused much of the debate on attacking Trump rather than laying out detailed policies.
Robert Wheeler, 48, a security firm executive in Nevada, was leaning toward Harris before the debate. He now says if the election were held tomorrow he would vote for Trump, largely because he thought Harris didn’t provide clarity on her policies.
“I felt like the whole debate was Kamala Harris telling me why not to vote for Donald Trump instead of why she’s the right candidate,” Wheeler said.
But Meredith Marshall, who is self-employed and lives in Los Angeles, said she was now for Harris. She said she had hoped to hear more about the economy from the vice president, but still liked her plan to help small business owners.
(Reporting by Tim Reid and Helen Coster, Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)
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