Who won the debate?

[IceSpear]

Hillary was objectively better, but Trump won the expectations game.  It wasn't a disaster for him, and that's about the best he could have hoped for at this point.

[IceSpear]

Does anybody realize that Trump won the debate simply by exceeding very low expectations?

Yeah.  It's unfair, but that's just the reality of it.

I don't for the life of me understand why acting like a basehead and saying he'd jail his opponent if elected constitutes 'exceeding expectations'. It wasn't like people were expecting Trump would drop the C-bomb on live television or something, were they?! This reminds me of the scene in Harry Potter where Fred and George Weasley say they should have gotten 'exceeds expectations' grades on all their tests just for showing up. The other characters laughed it off then, and if there were any justice in the world America would laugh it off now.

It's because that happened in the first 20 minutes, and most Americans, including the pundits, have the attention span of a goldfish.

[IceSpear]

So the Trump people still say he won?

I think many people overestimated the expectations game. As most of Atlas and the pundits said, the poll does confirm people think Trump vastly outperformed expectations. But they still give Hillary a crushing win regardless.

I am a bit surprised (pleasantly) that the average American was able to acknowledge that someone can outperform expectations but still lose decisively.