The Most Important Issues for Voters Reflected in the Debate

Among the key issues for voters identified via various polls in the U.S., mentions of phrases connected to the economy, immigration and abortion were most prevalent in the second presidential debate between Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on September 10. Topics like Ukraine, health care and jobs weren't mentioned as often.

The transcript published by ABC News analyzed by Statista shows that the words economy, inflation and prices were uttered 39 times, with Trump mentioning them twice as many times as Harris. This can be attributed to Trump's rhetorical tactic which often relies on repeating the same sentence almost verbatim or with only a handful of words changed two or three times to drive home a point. While Trump heavily relies on this tactic, Harris also employed it in specific circumstances.

This pattern is repeated for the immigration cluster containing the words immigrants, immigration and border as well as crime and jobs. For example, Trump claimed that crime around the world and in Venezuela is down because these countries send their criminals to the United States, a statement which isn't reflected in official statistics.

Harris mentioned the phrases health or health care and taxes more, speaking at length about how Trump's proposed tax policies will allegedly mostly help wealthy individuals and how the Affordable Care Act needs to be improved and expanded. Out of the total mentions of the words abortion and Ukraine as a stand-in for foreign policy, both candidates had roughly equal shares.

The second and most likely last debate between the two presidential candidates can be seen as another high point for the Harris campaign, which was buoyed by a strong campaign start and led to the Democratic presidential nominee being ahead in popular vote averages by 1.1 percent. Additionally, a CNN flash poll suggests that most surveyed debate watchers thought Harris outclassed Trump.