The event on Tuesday night, set to be aired by ABC News and moderated by the network’s anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, will mark the first time Harris will have faced off against Trump since assuming the Democratic nomination, with recent national polling suggesting that the candidates are almost even heading into the final months of campaigning. No other debates have been scheduled between the two before the November vote.
Of the 3,901 respondents to the Investing.com poll, 77.4% picked Trump to win the debate, while only 22.6% selected Harris.
Following the last presidential debate in June, a stumbling performance from President Joe Biden sparked a wave of concern in Democratic circles around his ability to continue his re-election drive. Biden eventually stepped aside and endorsed Harris, who secured the Democratic nomination last month.
Trump, meanwhile, has since survived an attempted assassination at an open-air rally in Pennsylvania, and later accepted the Republican nomination.
A groundswell of support for Harris led to her erasing much of the deficit left by Biden in key swing state polls, although signs are recently emerging that this honeymoon period for the current Vice President may be beginning to wane.
A national poll by The New York Times and Siena College points to a tight race, with Trump holding a slight edge over Harris. According to the survey, Trump holds a 48% to 47% lead, a margin that falls within the poll’s three-point error range, suggesting that the outcome of the election is still highly uncertain.
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets have said that, during the debate, Wall Street will likely be closely monitoring any fresh details the candidates could provide about their respective domestic tax policy proposals.
Harris has outlined plans to increase the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% as part of a bid to find a “fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.” Trump, on the other hand, has promised to slash the corporate tax rate to 15% from 21%.
“In terms of the math,” the RBC analysts said, Harris’s plan is forecast to dent S&P 500 earnings by “more than 8%.”
They added that Trump’s plan is estimated to boost returns by over 7%. However, they cast some doubt over this projection, citing comments from Trump last week in which the former president vowed that the tax reduction to 15% would be “solely for companies that make their product in America” instead of all US corporations.
Analysts at Citi also noted that some election trades “may come back into focus” following the debate, although they flagged that investors will still need to monitor the potential impact of a major Federal Reserve monetary policy decision next week.
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