Why do people say that Hillary won all three debates?

[twenty42]

She definitely won the first debate, as Trump came across as extremely impetuous while Hillary was composed and professional.

I don’t see how anybody could say that she won the second debate. Trump successfully threw the female card back in her face by bringing up her husband’s many indiscretions, and she was unprepared for that. He managed to take the high ground after the final question requesting that they compliment each other, where he actually acknowledged that she was tough as nails and a worthy opponent as opposed to her snarky left-handed compliment that vaguely acknowledged his children. And of course, “Because you’d be in jail” has already been etched into presidential debate lore.

The third debate was pretty boring and may have been a narrow win for Hillary, but she undid that pretty quickly in her post-debate interview when she smugly guaranteed her own victory and underlined how “frightening” it was that Trump didn’t realize this. Dismissing the will of voters is a bad idea 100% of the time, and that incident immediately turned that debate into a draw if anything.

Overall I’d say the debates were largely inconclusive and had little effect on the race, just because the first and second debates cancelled each other out and the third was too insignificant to have any impact.

[twenty42]

Stop the revisionist hot takes! They are not backed up by evidence-the polls show that Clinton won all 3 debates and she expanded her poll lead during this period, and the media coverage(which is often more important than initial polls) gave the debates to her. The debates helped Clinton, but their effect was gone by the election because of the Comey letter which erased her debate bounce(without it she'd have won by 4-5 points and the debates would be the obvious turning point in the campaign). This isn't to say she ran a perfect campaign. However, the debates were clearly a Clinton victory and did not contribute to her loss.

Mic drop!

“Because you’d be in jail” was the mic drop of 2016.

[twenty42]

She blew Trump out of the water in the first debate

In the second, Trump came off as even more of an unhinged, hotheaded, vindictive a**hole than he usually does. "Because you'd be in jail" played well with the 30% of people who wanted to believe that, but to the other 70% of us, it sounded extremely petulant and uncivilized. Trump lost the debate while Hillary only won in comparison

The third was quite boring; Hillary had the flub on immigration but Trump had the odd spiel about when they "rip babies" out of their mothers at 9 months, which is also known as "birth," and the 2 minute long incomprehensible rant/run-on sentence that was ostensibly about Iran. While he was saying the latter part, I just turned to my (Trump voter) father and said "I have no idea what he's trying to say" and he didn't either. Clinton won this debate too, also only by comparison.

TL;DR: Clinton won the first debate, while Trump lost the other two.

Trump didn’t have time to play nice in the second debate. He knew he was walking into the lion’s mouth with the headlines that were swirling over the past couple days, and he raised some pretty salient points about Hillary condemning his words but forgiving Bill’s actions. 2016 wasn’t an election for Queensbury rules...it was dog-eat-dog and Trump was playing to win. Funny how Hillary was allowed to be as vindictive and petulant as she wanted to be, but Trump was a bully when he used the same tactics.

[twenty42]

She blew Trump out of the water in the first debate

In the second, Trump came off as even more of an unhinged, hotheaded, vindictive a**hole than he usually does. "Because you'd be in jail" played well with the 30% of people who wanted to believe that, but to the other 70% of us, it sounded extremely petulant and uncivilized. Trump lost the debate while Hillary only won in comparison

The third was quite boring; Hillary had the flub on immigration but Trump had the odd spiel about when they "rip babies" out of their mothers at 9 months, which is also known as "birth," and the 2 minute long incomprehensible rant/run-on sentence that was ostensibly about Iran. While he was saying the latter part, I just turned to my (Trump voter) father and said "I have no idea what he's trying to say" and he didn't either. Clinton won this debate too, also only by comparison.

TL;DR: Clinton won the first debate, while Trump lost the other two.

Trump didn’t have time to play nice in the second debate. He knew he was walking into the lion’s mouth with the headlines that were swirling over the past couple days, and he raised some pretty salient points about Hillary condemning his words but forgiving Bill’s actions. 2016 wasn’t an election for Queensbury rules...it was dog-eat-dog and Trump was playing to win. Funny how Hillary was allowed to be as vindictive and petulant as she wanted to be, but Trump was a bully when he used the same tactics.

You really think Hillary Clinton was more petulant than Mr. "My mic wasn't working properly/this is so unfair/etc." Trump?

“Putin wants you to win because he wants a puppet in the White House.”
“Donald’s taxes would go up too...assuming he couldn’t figure out how to get out of it.”
“It’s really frightening to think that he isn’t going to accept the results of this election.” (Irony at it’s finest on that one, eh?)
“They are what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’”

And my personal favorite from her past...

“Shame on you, Barack Obama!!”

[twenty42]

She blew Trump out of the water in the first debate

In the second, Trump came off as even more of an unhinged, hotheaded, vindictive a**hole than he usually does. "Because you'd be in jail" played well with the 30% of people who wanted to believe that, but to the other 70% of us, it sounded extremely petulant and uncivilized. Trump lost the debate while Hillary only won in comparison

The third was quite boring; Hillary had the flub on immigration but Trump had the odd spiel about when they "rip babies" out of their mothers at 9 months, which is also known as "birth," and the 2 minute long incomprehensible rant/run-on sentence that was ostensibly about Iran. While he was saying the latter part, I just turned to my (Trump voter) father and said "I have no idea what he's trying to say" and he didn't either. Clinton won this debate too, also only by comparison.

TL;DR: Clinton won the first debate, while Trump lost the other two.

Trump didn’t have time to play nice in the second debate. He knew he was walking into the lion’s mouth with the headlines that were swirling over the past couple days, and he raised some pretty salient points about Hillary condemning his words but forgiving Bill’s actions. 2016 wasn’t an election for Queensbury rules...it was dog-eat-dog and Trump was playing to win. Funny how Hillary was allowed to be as vindictive and petulant as she wanted to be, but Trump was a bully when he used the same tactics.

You really think Hillary Clinton was more petulant than Mr. "My mic wasn't working properly/this is so unfair/etc." Trump?

“Putin wants you to win because he wants a puppet in the White House.”
“Donald’s taxes would go up too...assuming he couldn’t figure out how to get out of it.”
“It’s really frightening to think that he isn’t going to accept the results of this election.” (Irony at it’s finest on that one, eh?)
“They are what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’”

And my personal favorite from her past...

“Shame on you, Barack Obama!!”

Putin did want a puppet in the White House, and he got one.  You're forgetting Trump's line right after that - "No you're the puppet!"

Given the fact that he didn't pay taxes for years, how is #2 petulant?  You're also forgetting his response to that - "Such a nasty woman."

I'll go out on a limb and say the basket of deplorables comment was actually the most correct thing she said in the entire campaign.  She was not saying that all Trump supporters were racist, etc.  She said half of them are.  The other half, she said, are concerned about the economy, and we can talk to them, convince them, is what she said.

Good rule of thumb - when your sound bites constantly need justification and re-explanation, you’re probably not too good at politics. People tend to make snap judgments on the words that come out of your mouth, and “what they meant/were trying to say” doesn’t really matter. Romney’s “47%” and “binders full of women” gaffes were likely taken out of context as was Al Gore’s invention of the Internet, but perception is reality.

[twenty42]

I actually think Trump won all 3 debates.

In Debate I Trump did enough to show he could hold his own in a debate with her. The bar was so low in the first debate for him that he exceeded expectations even if she technically may have done better on points.

Trump clearly won Debate II. Hillary had no rebuttal for the accusations about Bill and also she had weak answers about her server. Trump may have played to his base a lot in the debate but he still won the debate.

I think the third debate was actually Trump's weakest performance but that he still managed to win it because of the expectations game. Hillary never got a knockout punch against a candidate with 0 political experience in 3 debates and Trump held his own which is why he won similar to Bush vs. Gore in 2000 where Gore was much more well versed on policy matters.

The biggest mystery of the second debate was how the hell did Hillary expect to get away with using sexual morality as a campaign device? It was as if she totally forgot that her husband was at the front and center of the biggest sex scandal in American history. She probably would've had a better debate performance if she left the Access Hollywood tape alone. She gave Trump a perfect opening to call her out on hypocrisy, which gave him a clear win in the debate.

[twenty42]

Because the polls all overwhelmingly said she did. Even if they were significantly off, the margin was big enough that there's zero ambiguity.

The revisionist history here is getting insane.

Rhetorically speaking, she destroyed Trump. Clearly she had a firm grasp of policy and message, while Trump sniffed loudly while making third-grade-level retorts like "Wrong." and "You're the puppet."

But by a different metric, though, how much did Clinton's debate performances help or hinder her electoral chances? How were poll questions worded? "After this debate, are you more or less likely to vote for Clinton, more or less likely to vote for Trump?" Because that's what mattered.

The first debate definitely helped her in the polls, at the very least.  After the third debate she was in solid shape.  Ultimately the debates did nothing to help Trump's electoral chances.  What helped him in the end was the natural tightening of the race, combined with the Comey letter, also combined with the polls being slightly off.

I'm not sure the polls were slightly off as much as there was about a 2% swing toward Trump post-Comey, which too late to be reflected in polling. For the period of time they were taken, they probably were accurate.

No Comey letter, and we're probably going into Month 29 of an eight-justice SCOTUS and Month 14 of Clinton impeachment hearings.

Nationally, the polls were pretty accurate, but were wrong in certain states (such as Wisconsin).  That might have more to do with the fact that Wisconsin wasn't really considered a swing state and thus wasn't polled much, though.  They were also off in Ohio and Iowa, too, though, so I think polls generally overestimated Clinton in the midwest.  They were more accurate in other places, though - I think the polling average in FL had Trump ahead by about 0.2%, and the polls actually underestimated Clinton in NV (not surprising though, with polling in that state).

The big miss was Wisconsin. I'm still scratching my head at how they could have gotten the state so, so wrong. MI and PA were the ones I was worried about. I never thought for a moment he would win Wisconsin.

I chalk it up to bad methodology and just enough swing at the very end.

There's also some analysis that indicates that Hillary basically got the percentage she was polling at in Wisconsin, even if she was leading by 6-7% in the polls.  That analysis is flawed, though, in my view, because it then assumes that Trump got virtually all of the undecideds.

Why does it assume Trump got all undecideds? The final poling average in WI was 46.8 Clinton - 40.3 Trump - 12.9 Undecided/Third Party. The result ended up being 46.5 Clinton - 47.2 Trump - 6.3 Third Party. Doing the math here and allowing for margin of error, it would be reasonable to conclude that Trump won about 50-60% of undecideds, with the other 40-50% voting third party. Hillary's problem in WI is that she won virtually NO undecideds, which could have been a very different ballgame had she actually paid some attention to the state.

[twenty42]

Because the polls all overwhelmingly said she did. Even if they were significantly off, the margin was big enough that there's zero ambiguity.

The revisionist history here is getting insane.

Rhetorically speaking, she destroyed Trump. Clearly she had a firm grasp of policy and message, while Trump sniffed loudly while making third-grade-level retorts like "Wrong." and "You're the puppet."

But by a different metric, though, how much did Clinton's debate performances help or hinder her electoral chances? How were poll questions worded? "After this debate, are you more or less likely to vote for Clinton, more or less likely to vote for Trump?" Because that's what mattered.

The first debate definitely helped her in the polls, at the very least.  After the third debate she was in solid shape.  Ultimately the debates did nothing to help Trump's electoral chances.  What helped him in the end was the natural tightening of the race, combined with the Comey letter, also combined with the polls being slightly off.

I'm not sure the polls were slightly off as much as there was about a 2% swing toward Trump post-Comey, which too late to be reflected in polling. For the period of time they were taken, they probably were accurate.

No Comey letter, and we're probably going into Month 29 of an eight-justice SCOTUS and Month 14 of Clinton impeachment hearings.

Nationally, the polls were pretty accurate, but were wrong in certain states (such as Wisconsin).  That might have more to do with the fact that Wisconsin wasn't really considered a swing state and thus wasn't polled much, though.  They were also off in Ohio and Iowa, too, though, so I think polls generally overestimated Clinton in the midwest.  They were more accurate in other places, though - I think the polling average in FL had Trump ahead by about 0.2%, and the polls actually underestimated Clinton in NV (not surprising though, with polling in that state).

The big miss was Wisconsin. I'm still scratching my head at how they could have gotten the state so, so wrong. MI and PA were the ones I was worried about. I never thought for a moment he would win Wisconsin.

I chalk it up to bad methodology and just enough swing at the very end.

There's also some analysis that indicates that Hillary basically got the percentage she was polling at in Wisconsin, even if she was leading by 6-7% in the polls.  That analysis is flawed, though, in my view, because it then assumes that Trump got virtually all of the undecideds.

Why does it assume Trump got all undecideds? The final poling average in WI was 46.8 Clinton - 40.3 Trump - 12.9 Undecided/Third Party. The result ended up being 46.5 Clinton - 47.2 Trump - 6.3 Third Party. Doing the math here and allowing for margin of error, it would be reasonable to conclude that Trump won about 50-60% of undecideds, with the other 40-50% voting third party. Hillary's problem in WI is that she won virtually NO undecideds, which could have been a very different ballgame had she actually paid some attention to the state.

You don't find it difficult to believe that Hillary got virtually no undecideds?  I think that's far fetched.

I'm not saying she literally got zero, but I think undecideds may have gone something like 50% Trump - 40% Third Party - 10% Clinton. Totally ignoring a state with undecideds in the double digits (and that came within 0.4 points of voting R the last time Obama wasn't on the ballot) was an astronomically stupid move, regardless of what her "margin" was in the polls.

[twenty42]

Probably because she absolutely crushed all three, lmao.

Could you provide evidence that she "absolutely crushed" the second debate? It's pretty widely accepted even among those who believe she narrowly won it that she was off her game in spots and that Trump stymied her on a couple of responses.