After a disastrous performance in the first debate, more border patrol and more asylum officers. President Trump, I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either. President Biden has fallen behind former President Donald Trump by six points. That's the widest lead in Wall Street Journal polling since 2021. Both parties were looking to this debate as a way to jolt voters, and Joe Biden came out on the wrong side of that as the White House and Biden campaign scramble to contain the fallout. Here are the major takeaways from the Wall Street Journal's post-debate poll. It was a performance that was very uneven, and importantly, it was pretty uneven right from the start. He had difficulty finishing his sentence occasionally. If we finally beat Medicare post-debate, confidence in Biden's ability to lead fell. 80% of voters say the 81-year-old is too old to run for re-election compared to 73%.

voters in February. Many democratic voters in polls and strategists have said for a while  that Joe Biden's biggest vulnerability in election was how his age was perceived by the  public. So the fact that our poll found that more voters think he's too old to be president after the  debate than before the debate shows that he was really weakened by it. And Democrats are especially worried while voters have said they don't like either candidate. About two thirds of Democrats want to replace Biden on the ballot more than the number of  Republicans who want to replace Trump. What our poll found is that you could draw a straight line from that debate performance by Joe Biden  to how the public is viewing him today. Because only 6% of people in our poll who said that they watched the debate or heard  about it, thought that Joe Biden exceeded their expectations. That number was 46% for Trump, even though Trump expanded his lead, voters still have concerns about him too.

We're going to make this country successful again because right now it's a failing nation. My retribution is going to be a success. While a lot of the attention will be on Biden when we asked voters, which was a bigger concern, Trump's behavior or Biden's age. Voters were about equally split on which was a bigger concern. Biden and White House aides have been insistent that he will not drop out of the race but they have a lot of Democrats to win over. After the debate, the Biden campaign and Joe Biden himself have acknowledged that it was a bad night for them. But their theory of the case of why they should stay in the race and their theory of the case of how Joe Biden can rebound is that the closer we get to election day, the more stark the choice will be between the policies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, not simply their personalities or how they present. And so that's the theory of the case. A lot of Democrats have been saying in the last couple of days that they disagree with that and they would like to pick a different

candidate, and we're just going to have to see how it plays out.

WSJ Poll Reveals How Much Debate Hurt President Biden | WSJ

The Wall Street Journal takes you inside carefully selected stories and events in a visually captivating way so you can dig deeper into the news and insights that matter to you. 

WSJ Poll Reveals How Much Debate Hurt President Biden | WSJ

WSJ Poll Reveals How Much Debate Hurt President Biden | WSJ

Scripts