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By Joe Concha

Oftentimes there’s a decided, night-and-day gap between the media’s idea of public perception and actual public perception when it comes to Donald Trump: Just think back to the 2016 campaign.

After Tuesday’s big debate in Philadelphia between the former president and Kamala Harris, we may be looking at another big disconnect between the press and the public.

“Harris Dominates as Trump Gets Defensive” was the lead headline in The New York Times.

“Harris dominated Trump in debate, but will it matter?” was The Washington Post’s take.

Along with “dominating,” Kamala also “commanded” the debate, according to MSNBC’s John Heileman, the aforementioned Times and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — almost as if a memo with instructions and approved verbiage had gone out.

For Harris to dominate, she needed a big assist from the moderators.

The hopelessly biased David Muir and Linsey Davis obliged and then some, fact-checking Trump five times without correcting the veep even once — despite her repeated lies, as dutifully documented by The Post. 

But after the debate, as many in the media swooned over their commanding new queen, a funny thing happened: Polls and focus groups emerged showing her winning on style points, but Trump winning on substance.

A Reuters focus group, for example, tracked 10 undecided voters and asked how they plan to vote after watching the debate.

Six of them said they had chosen to vote for Trump, while just three said Harris’ performance had swayed them. One remained undecided.

Over at C-SPAN, an online poll also showed a decided Trump victory, with close to three-quarters of respondents saying he had won.

Meanwhile, CNN’s post-debate poll showed Trump expanding a big lead on the question of which candidate can handle the economy best. Before Tuesday’s matchup, Trump led by 18 percentage points on this No.1 issue; afterward, it grew to a 20-point margin.

So why the disconnect?

Full op-ed over at The New York Post: