A packed Kaufmann Auditorium buzzed with anticipation as over 200 students counted down the minutes before the 2024 Presidential Debate was officially set to begin on Tuesday night.
Throughout the debate, students not only reacted to the face-off on the screen but to each other’s comments in the audience — occasionally yelling “Bingo!” as they crossed debate predictions off.
The Kaufmann Auditorium watch party — co-hosted by Cornell Democrats, Cornell Students for Harris, Students for New York and the Phi Alpha Delta Pre-Law Fraternity — was one of many spaces for Cornellians to connect throughout the debate. The organizations registered students to vote in New York before the debate began.
Black Students United organized a watch party following a “meet the candidates” session to break down who the candidates are and how their policies impact the Black community.
Cornell Republicans also hosted a watch party but did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Tuesday marked the first debate between Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. On Thursday, Trump announced that he would not debate Harris again.
Vice President of Cornell Democrats Saad Razzak ’26 believed Harris decisively won the debate.
“I think that in every single thing that was discussed, whether that was natural security, foreign policy, domestic policy [or] economic policy, Vice President Harris just blew former president Donald Trump out of the water,” Razzak said.
BSU political action co-chair Eva Vanterpool ’27 also said that Harris’ messaging came across as more clear than Trump’s.
“I think that as a debate opponent, [Harris] was a lot stronger [in] her messaging, and it was a lot more clear than Donald Trump, who I think just kind of repeated the same messaging, [the] same rhetoric that we’ve heard a lot of times,” Vanterpool said.
Trump made multiple false claims throughout the evening, including claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating pets and that Democrats support “execution after birth.” Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis — who are ABC anchors — fact-checked these claims in real time.
Some statements from Harris were false as well, including that Trump left the U.S. with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.
“I do think in general she [Harris] was able to debunk a lot of the lies,” said Niles Hite ’26, the president of Cornell Democrats. “I’m glad they finally fact-checked him [Trump] in real time because they did not do that last time, which really hurt their [the Democrats’] campaign a lot.”
The debate left some students with a sense of optimism.
“I think for the first time, at least in my life, I felt a little bit of hope when Kamala Harris was talking of the American future,” Vanterpool said. “And though I don’t think that Kamala’s message was perfect, … I do think that her message resonated a little bit better with myself, and I would say that was probably the consensus in the crowd as well.”
Hite thought the debate would allow “the American people [to] finally realize that there is a way forward.”
“We should be trying to make policies that benefit the new people that are coming into said melting pot, that are making this place as wonderful as it is, not focusing on division,” Hite said.
Razzak said he did not “want to go back to the last few years of division, of just consistent vitriol and no bipartisanship.”
“I think after tonight it should be clear to everybody, anybody that’s on the fence, any Democrat who [is] not sure about voting, that there is one right choice for America,” Razzak said.