However, Ford also committed a costly blunder in the campaign that halted his momentum. During the second presidential debate on October 6, in a response to Max Frankel, Ford stumbled when he asserted that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration". He added that he did not "believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union" and made the same claim with regard to Yugoslavia and Romania (Yugoslavia was not a Warsaw Pact member). Ford refused to retract his statement for almost a week after the debate; as a result his surge in the polls stalled and Carter was able to maintain a slight lead in the polls.