Half of the students in an informal Campus Current poll on Wednesday said Vice President Kamala Harris won Tuesday’s presidential debate.

In a survey of 50 students, 25 said Kamala Harris won the debate. One said former President Donald Trump won the debate and six said it was too close to call.

Eighteen students said they did not watch the debate.

“Trump is an idiot,” third-year film student Jason Kalshoven, who said Harris won, said. “He’s straight up an idiot and Kamala did a great job pushing his buttons.”

ABC News hosted the second 2024 presidential debate and the first one between Harris and Trump. It lasted 90 minutes.

Second-year history student Éva Parry, who said Harris won, said the vice president did “a really good job” of getting her points across.

“She definitely, like, had [come] across as [the] more sane political candidate,” Parry said. “She did a really good job, kind of, handling him.”

Third-year entrepreneurship student Cameron Millar, who said Harris won, agreed, saying Trump came across as an “insane person.”

“[He] doesn’t make any sense,” Millar said. “Even when he’s trying to talk about something normal, instead of, you know … executing babies or illegal transgender surgeries on illegal aliens in jail … he couldn’t stick to one subject.”

Millar added: “It shows how uneducated he is and how little he knows. And I think Kamala was very good at, kind of, baiting him into just continuing to talk about things that made absolutely no sense. … If ‘Saturday Night Live’ were to do a sketch on the presidential debate, they wouldn’t have to change a thing that Trump said and it would still read as a sketch because it was so ridiculous.”

Second-year student Hugo Polanco disagreed, saying Trump was “charismatic” while Harris came across as “robotic.”

“I feel like Trump performed really well,” Polanco, a registered Republican, said. “I do believe each candidate had their strengths. Trump came out and asked her direct questions on the podium, and then Kamala looked slightly better than [normal].”

According to Polanco, the debate was a “tie.”

“No one necessarily won the debate,” Polanco added. “We know what Trump believes in [and] we know what he wants to do for the country and all that. I feel like a lot of voters went into that debate not knowing what Kamala’s stances are in a lot of things and still went out of that debate not knowing what she believes in. … It’s the same as before.”

Polanco added: “I like to listen to everyone’s side. I’ll hear people out.”

Dual-enrolled student Ibraheem Zia, who didn’t watch the debate, said he leans “slightly towards” the Republicans because he thinks they have better business policies.

“Obviously I want him to win,” Zia said of Trump. “I believe he’s a better speaker than Kamala.”

First-year emergency medical technician student Finch Cobb said neither candidate “prove[d] themselves to the full extent that our presidents should be proved,” so nobody won the debate.