CNN- 20 Oct. 2016- Hillary Clinton won the final presidential debate, topping Donald Trump by a 13-point margin according to a CNN/ORC poll of debate watchers, giving Clinton a clean sweep across all three of this year’s presidential debates.
But Wednesday’s debate watchers were closely divided on which candidate they trusted more on the issues most important to them.
Overall, 52 percent who watched tonight’s matchup thought Clinton did the best job, to the 39 percent that thought Trump did. That’s a tighter margin than in the first two debates. After the first debate, 62 percent of those who watched said Clinton won, 27 percent Trump, followed by a 57 percent Clinton to 34 percent Trump margin for the town hall debate held October 9.
Trump was again seen as spending more time on the attack, by a 60 percent to 23 percent margin, and more said his attacks were unfair (43 percent) than said so of Clinton’s jabs at Trump (34 percent). Even among Republicans, 41 percent said they considered Clinton’s attacks on Trump’s fair, but Democrats were not nearly as accepting of Trump’s attacks on their nominee (19 percent said his attacks against Clinton were fair).
Aside from partisanship, the poll suggests one of the sharpest demographic divides among debate-watchers is education among whites. White voters who hold college degrees said Clinton won by a 58 percent to 33 percent margin, while those who do not have a four-year degree say Trump won by a 48 percent to 41 percent margin. And the gap between these voters on which candidate agreed with you on the issues that matter most to you is even larger, with 59 percent of white college debate-watchers saying Clinton does while 61 percent of whites without degrees say it’s Trump.