These topics dominated the Trump-Biden debate

CNN moderator Jake Tapper opened by asking Biden about the rising price of groceries and of homes. Over the next 90 minutes, candidates grappled with issues including taxes, Social Security and the increasing costs of prescription drugs and child care.

Three issues of importance to Deciders saw increased presence compared to most other general election debates: threats to democracy, abortion and immigration.

More than half of Deciders in a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll said “threats to democracy” were an extremely important issue factoring into their vote. The issue got more time than it has in previous debates as the moderators raised questions about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Moderators asked Trump three times if he would accept the election results.

“If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,” Trump answered the third time.

The 2016 Trump-Clinton debates were the first time since 2000 that a debate moderator raised the question of election interference and directly asked candidates if they’d accept the election results.

About 6 in 10 Deciders say that the economy is an “extremely important” issue for the election. Threats to U.S. democracy, crime, racism, immigration and abortion round out the top six issues, each with at least 40 percent of Deciders considering it as “extremely important.” For each of the six topics, at least 1 in 5 Deciders do not trust either of the candidates.

In both the 2008 and 2012 debates, the economy was mentioned over 1,000 times as presidential candidates discussed solutions to the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020 there were only 350 mentions of the economy in the two Biden-Trump debates.

Foreign policy has also been a major topic debated by presidential candidates since 2000, spiking in a 2008 debate at about 500 mentions before dropping after 2012. There was a lot of public interest in foreign policy after 9/11 given the United States’ involvement in the “war on terror” in the Middle East. Now, both the Israel-Gaza war and the Russia-Ukraine war appear among the top 10 important issues for Deciders.

The 2020 debates spent a good amount of time looking at the issue of climate change. Biden promised in both debates to reenter the Paris accords, which he promptly carried through on shortly after his inauguration.

Crime, a recurring subject of discussion in the presidential debates, was the fifth most-mentioned topic, followed closely by immigration.

Debates surrounding immigration, which 40 percent of the Deciders marked as extremely important this year, spiked in the 2016 Trump-Clinton debates, but notably weren’t as big of a concern in Biden and Trump’s 2020 face off. Immigration made a comeback in the 2024 debate as candidates discussed border security.

Abortion, which became a large issue following Dobbs v. Jackson in 2022, was mentioned a couple of times in past debates. Two years into a post-Roe world, abortion was the second issue candidates debated Thursday night.

Trump took credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade with his three U.S. Supreme Court nominations. When asked, Trump said he agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision not to block abortion pills.

Racism, a strong concern to the Deciders of today, hasn’t historically been a major topic in the post-2000s debates. Biden and Trump briefly sparred over their appeal to Black voters.

The Post obtained transcripts of presidential debates for the final two candidates since 2000 from The Commission on Presidential Debates. The topics of analysis were determined using the categories cited as “extremely important” for potential voters from The Washington Post-Schar School Decider’s poll. Health care was added as a topic given its relevance to U.S. politics, despite it not being a category of the poll. For each topic, The Post developed a list of keywords related to the category and counted how many times each keyword appeared in the speeches.