Hillary Clinton was deemed the winner of Monday night's debate by 62% of voters who tuned in to watch, while just 27% said they thought Donald Trump had the better night, according to a CNN/ORC Poll of voters who watched the debate. That drubbing is similar to Mitt Romney's dominant performance over President Barack Obama in the first 2012 presidential debate.
Voters who watched said Clinton
expressed her views more clearly than Trump and had a better understanding of
the issues by a margin of more than 2-to-1. Clinton also was seen as having
done a better job addressing concerns voters might have about her potential
presidency by a 57% to 35% margin, and as the stronger leader by a 56% to 39%
margin.
The gap was smaller on which
candidate appeared more sincere and authentic, though still broke in Clinton's
favor, with 53% saying she was more sincere vs. 40% who felt Trump did better
on that score. Trump topped Clinton 56% to 33% as the debater who spent more
time attacking their opponent.
Although the survey suggested debate
watchers were more apt to describe themselves as Democrats than the overall
pool of voters, even independents who watched deemed Clinton the winner, 54%
vs. 33% who thought Trump did the best job in the debate.
And the survey suggests Clinton
outperformed the expectations of those who watched. While pre-debate interviews
indicated these watchers expected Clinton to win by a 26-point margin, that
grew to 35 points in the post-debate survey.
About half in the poll say the
debate did not have an effect on their voting plans, 47% said it didn't make a
difference, but those who say they were moved by it tilted in Clinton's
direction, 34% said the debate made them more apt to vote for Clinton, 18% more
likely to back Trump.
On the issues, voters who watched
broadly say Clinton would do a better job handling foreign policy, 62% to 35%,
and most think she would be the better candidate to handle terrorism, 54% to
43% who prefer Trump. But on the economy, the split is much closer, with 51%
saying they favor Clinton's approach vs. 47% who prefer Trump.
Most debate watchers came away from
Monday's face-off with doubts about Trump's ability to handle the presidency.
Overall, 55% say they didn't think Trump would be able to handle the job of
president, 43% said they thought he would. Among political independents who
watched the debate, it's a near-even split, 50% say he can handle it, 49% that
he can't.
And voters who watched were more apt
to see Trump's attacks on Clinton as unfair than they were to see her critiques
that way. About two-thirds of debate viewers, 67%, said Clinton's critiques of
Trump were fair, while just 51% said the same of Trump.
Assessments of Trump's attacks on
Clinton were sharply split by gender, with 58% of men seeing them as fair
compared with 44% of women who watched on Monday. There was almost no gender
divide in perceptions of whether Clinton's attacks were fair.
The CNN/ORC post-debate poll
includes interviews with 521 registered voters who watched the September 26
debate. Results among debate-watchers have a margin of sampling error of plus
or minus 4.5 percentage points. Respondents were originally interviewed as part
of a September 23-25 telephone survey of a random sample of Americans, and
indicated they planned to watch the debate and would be willing to be
re-interviewed when it was over
Source:CNN
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