Biden wins the first debate, but the effect of his victory is uncertain

Joe Biden, Democratic candidate for president of the United States, this Tuesday.Patrick Semansky / AP

Flash

polls

made immediately after microphones that have been open for 90 uninterrupted minutes for Donald Trump and Joe Biden were closed indicate that the Democratic candidate has won the debate tonight, a show that has achieved the qualification of "confusing" or "chaotic ”Among a majority of analysts.

It is in any case the first in a presidential race that is just beginning;

although, really, many of us feel that he has never left us since November 2016. This sense of permanent campaign is essential to frame the month that awaits us: for most Americans, for most of the world, tonight is not a turning point, not a starting gun.

It's one more grain of sand in a news desert that feels both empty and overwhelming.

An electoral debate is a provider of information in search of demand among voters for new data, impressions, and hitherto unknown aspects about the candidates among which they have to decide.

Unless they know about the candidates, or the more different the new information proposed is compared to the one already had (the more space there is between the expectations and the reality learned), the more demand there will be for what happened in the

.

In this election, the information available on the contenders is extraordinarily detailed.

There are few people left in America who do not have an idea about Trump and Biden.

Such is the case that the volume of undecided among likely voters (the category of person that polls tend to adhere to in a country with a traditionally high abstention) barely touches 5% at its peak, and has been this way since March of this year. , according to the follow-up made by the renowned Monmouth University Demonstration Institute.

However, it is true that not all determined voters are the same.

Less before the more or less surprising information that a debate can provide.

Tonight's has been particularly not very new (only 17% of those surveyed by CBS said they felt "informed" after seeing it, compared to 69% of "irritated"), but since we cannot be on the mind of each citizen, we have to manage to find out its dialectical permeability.

The Monmouth poll helps us to look for that nuance in which it will probably end up deciding the possible effect of the recent debate, and of those that come: to distinguish between people who have their vote "safe" or immovable for Trump or Biden, and those who consider their decision today as "very", "somewhat" or "unlikely".

This firmness determines the degree of penetration of the new information, of the arguments and decisions of tonight, in the different voters.

The convinced have been growing in the last six months, as is normal: as the final date approaches, people have more certainties.

More than 75% of each candidate already knows that they are not going to move from where they are.

The Ipsos poll with FiveThirtyEight.com shows similar results: about eight out of ten voters are completely certain about their decision.

But there would still be between 15% and 25% of voters more or less susceptible.

Along the same lines, only 13% of people declared last week that the debate could change their mind.

Her profile is the classic of the undecided in any election: women, young, non-white and with a lower income (and education).

This is the map of accessible voters, sensitive to information from debates like tonight's.

But in an election that is decided State by State, and that is going to focus on a handful of them where the number of likely voters for each party is more or less similar, the key is not only on which side the majority of people fall. which are decided after a debate.

The key is where they are.

States at stake: unpredictable effect

The federal nature of US elections makes aggregate surveys are not ideal for discerning who is ultimately the winner

of a debate.

The case of 2012 illustrates it perfectly: on October 3 of that year Barack Obama lost, according to the consensus of analysts and voters, his first dialectical meeting with Republican Mitt Romney.

National polls reflected it: Obama lost 4.4 points of his margin after that date.

But in those handful of places where the election was actually being played, the then-president's negative result hardly reinforced a trend that had already been underway.

It did not change it: it was just a mirage of national polls, favored by a news cycle that during those days focused on the apparent defeat in the

Obama

.

Eventually, the trend would turn in their favor.

Voters might decide that the information gained from that debate was not as definitive as what they already knew about the candidates.

Or they would acquire another, in subsequent days of the campaign, that would return them to their initial position.

Obama would end up with the most states at stake, from Nevada to Florida, and win the aggregate national vote by a greater distance than expected by the average polling.

The moral for Biden is served: tonight's victory is small, momentary and uncertain.

It occurs in the middle of a trench war defined in advance.

Thus, it will take more than 90 minutes to overturn increasingly firm decisions, or to attract to its side the few non-aligned that remain and can still decide the future of the nation.

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