Gillespie definitely won.
Northam went on a few cringe worthy tangents, such as flipping subjects and criticizing the moderator, and also spoke in vague and hollow terms, in both summaries and rebuttals, while Gillespie utilized statistics very effectively. However, if I was a resident of Virginia, this debate would not impact my vote very much. But, I used to hate Gillespie, but after I watched the debate, I only dislike him now instead, something about the guy, I don't know... still definitely rooting for Northam though, just less excitedly than before.
I also thought Gillespie sounded better than Northam.
The worst part for Northam was where after Gillespie talked about his tax plan, Northam talked some generic platitudes about "coming together with both sides to construct a tax plan" and Gillespie responded by saying that Northam's tax plan was "to have a tax plan" and then went back to touting his own tax plan to cut income taxes gradually by 10 percent as long as there is enough revenue in the budget to do so (to prevent a situation like we saw in Kansas).
I'd say Gillespie won that debate.
Gillespie just did a good job of articulating himself and being able to give numbers and information for his plans. Northam just kinda rambled on about things with no clear message and just wasn't able to defend himself as well. I really hope Northam dose better the next debate and either gets more practice in or gets a new debate coach.
