Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump: Who Won The Presidential Debate?

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met in their first presidential debate on Monday night in Hofstra, New York.

The Democratic and Republican presidential nominees faced off in the first of three presidential debates, one that was expected to draw a record-setting viewership which some anticipated to be as many as 100 million across television and live streaming on websites and social media platforms.

At the outset, Trump and Clinton were civil and calm, staking out their key positions. About 15 minutes in, they were talking over each other and aiming delightful barbs at each other, too. An hour in, the gloves came off and the candidates were landing jabs and hurling zingers at each other.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump touted his apparent landslide win in the debate:

Online polls such as the ones Trump promoted are in no way scientific and are not a reflection of the voting population at large. People can vote in these multiple times, across different devices. People from anywhere — New York, Alabama, Russia, China, the moon (once we set up that base) — can go to any website and cast a vote for their candidate with no barrier to entry.

Post-debate polling that had any sort of method to its madness told a different story.

A poll from CNN and ORC of debate-watchers had Clinton winning 62 percent to 27 percent, a similar margin, CNN noted, that Mitt Romney enjoyed over Barack Obama after their first debate four years ago. Although the survey, in a rush to poll debate-watchers, skewed slightly Democrat — a limitation CNN was clear about — Clinton won over independents and voters who said the debate changed their mind.

The political analytics website FiveThirtyEight noted that the CNN/ORC post debate polls have, historically,correlated to shifts in post-debate polling.

Patch wants to know: Who won the debate? Take our online survey poll and share your thoughts in the comments.

Clinton, Trump images via Gage Skidmore, Flickr, used under Creative Commons; Lester Holt via YouTube