Harris jumps to 2nd among Democrats; Yang claims mike was muted

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris

Support for Sen. Kamala Harris almost doubled because of her performance in the Democratic debates last week.

Her gain still wasn't enough to overtake former Vice President Joe Biden, who still is the frontrunner even though he lost some of his lead.

A survey released by CNN on Monday (July 1) showed Harris moving up to second, ahead of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 8 points, and Sen. Bernie Sanders dropping to 4th.

The same poll has Biden dropping 10 percentage points among Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents since the last CNN poll in May. At the same time, the new CNN poll found that Harris had jumped nine points.

Overall, 22% supported Biden, while 17% were with Harris, 15% with Warren, and 14% with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). No one else in the field was above 5% — including South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who also suffered a significant drop.

Prior to the first debate, Biden led the pack of 24 candidates with 41.5% of the vote, according to fivethirtyeight.com. After the first debate (in which he didn’t even participate), his support shifted downward, landing at 35.4%. Following the second debate in which he is widely believed to have been routed, his support dropped again to 31.5%, a massive drop of 10%.

Harris, by all accounts the most impressive in the debate, had the largest positive jump. Before the first debate, she stood at 7.9% support. After the first debate (in which she didn’t participate), support for Harris dropped to 6.3%. However, after her performance in the second debate, which is widely considered masterful, Harris’ support more than doubled to 16.6%.

Much of the Indian American senator's new support came from voters who previously said they were backing Warren or Joe Biden. Her surge netted her more than $2.5 million in donations as the second-quarter deadline approaches.

Harris’ uptick came after she confronted Biden over his history opposing school busing for desegregation, a dramatic moment that dominated news coverage afterward and cemented her appearance as the debate winner.

Harris, who had been stuck in the No.5 position, is now tied for third with Warren, behind No. 1 Biden and No. 2 Bernie Sanders, who also lost points. Mayor Pete Buttigeig drops to the 5th spot.

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand came in last in the Drudge poll, winning just 2 percent of the vote.  Biden and Sanders ranked fifth and six respectively in the poll. 

Although he didn't move up in the polls, one of the major beneficiaries of the debates is Andrew Yang, even though he spoke the fewest words and had the fewest on-air minutes in the second day of the debate.

By midnight on Thursday, Yang had taken 28% of the vote in the Drudge Report's famed, but totally unscientific, snap online poll, easily beating Harris, who took second place with 17%.

The Drudge Report also had Hawaiian congressmember Tulsi Gabbard winning the first night's debate with 40% of those polled picking her as winner, beating Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who came in second with 12%. Other pundits from mainstream media, however, had Warren running away with the first night's debate.

Yang was at the center of another controversy. He claims that at times during the debate his microphone wasn't working, denying a chance to interject himself into the parts of the debate where everybody was trying to speak over each other.

A video of Yang trying to comment surfaced; John Hickenlooper visibly reacts to his words, but the audience is in the dark on what he tried to say. NBC later released a statement denying they had interfered with Yang’s microphone.

"There were times where I was like, hey, I wanted to make a contribution on climate change or education or other things and like, my mic didn't work, like the mic's actually not on," he said.

"And so I would just start talking and then like the moderators would just like ignore, and it doesn't matter," he said. "So the moderators have a fair amount of power and authority, including someone in production (who) is like turning on a mic or not."

Candidate Marianne Williamson, who was positioned next to Yang, also claimed that her mike was muted at times during the debate. Williamson and Yang were both given the least screentime of the 10 candidates on stage.

_______________________________________________________________________