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.

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

Because by any reasonable standard she did win all three debates. Trump showed himself to be an utterly unserious figure with no grasp of public policy in all three.

[UncleSam]

I wasn’t aware anyone seriously believed she did win all three debates. I think that your summary is pretty accurate - all you have to do is look at how the polls shifted after each debate to see who won.

After the first debate, Hillary’s leads jumped everywhere. She retook the lead in almost all the swing states she had lost it, especially in Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Colorado (people forget Trump was tied or leading in Colorado before the first debate).

After the second (which came about two days after the access Hollywood tape), all of the daily trackers jumped in trump’s direction. Granted they were likely to normalize given how big his fall was right after the tape dropped, but he clearly stabilized a race that was spiraling out of control for him.

The third debate barely had any impact on the polls. It was the least watched debate iirc and came a few days before the Comey letter dropped, which had a much bigger impact on the race.

I think it’s fair to say she won decisively in the first debate and perhaps a narrow win in the third debate. But she clearly lost the second debate, at least in terms of the impact the debate had on the race.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

I don't think any debate was much of a win for either person. Maybe Hillary won the first debate I guess, but I don't think it was as commanding of a win as most people said it was.

[Pericles]

Um, because she did. That's what the evidence shows, and she gained around 5 points over Trump from before the debates to after them.

[junior chįmp]

Nobody cares about the debates in real life

[Pericles]

Let's stop with all the revisionist takes. She made a lot of mistakes but the debates weren't one of them.

[Skill and Chance]

I wasn’t aware anyone seriously believed she did win all three debates. I think that your summary is pretty accurate - all you have to do is look at how the polls shifted after each debate to see who won.

After the first debate, Hillary’s leads jumped everywhere. She retook the lead in almost all the swing states she had lost it, especially in Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Colorado (people forget Trump was tied or leading in Colorado before the first debate).

After the second (which came about two days after the access Hollywood tape), all of the daily trackers jumped in trump’s direction. Granted they were likely to normalize given how big his fall was right after the tape dropped, but he clearly stabilized a race that was spiraling out of control for him.

The third debate barely had any impact on the polls. It was the least watched debate iirc and came a few days before the Comey letter dropped, which had a much bigger impact on the race.

I think it’s fair to say she won decisively in the first debate and perhaps a narrow win in the third debate. But she clearly lost the second debate, at least in terms of the impact the debate had on the race.

This.  The 2nd debate was a clear Trump win and the 1st debate a clear Hillary win.

[Da2017]

Because she came off professional. Trump was an incompetent. Why did Trump wait until the second debate to bring up the Basket of Deplorables remake?

[Pericles]

I wasn’t aware anyone seriously believed she did win all three debates. I think that your summary is pretty accurate - all you have to do is look at how the polls shifted after each debate to see who won.

After the first debate, Hillary’s leads jumped everywhere. She retook the lead in almost all the swing states she had lost it, especially in Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, and Colorado (people forget Trump was tied or leading in Colorado before the first debate).

After the second (which came about two days after the access Hollywood tape), all of the daily trackers jumped in trump’s direction. Granted they were likely to normalize given how big his fall was right after the tape dropped, but he clearly stabilized a race that was spiraling out of control for him.

The third debate barely had any impact on the polls. It was the least watched debate iirc and came a few days before the Comey letter dropped, which had a much bigger impact on the race.

I think it’s fair to say she won decisively in the first debate and perhaps a narrow win in the third debate. But she clearly lost the second debate, at least in terms of the impact the debate had on the race.

This.  The 2nd debate was a clear Trump win and the 1st debate a clear Hillary win.

That's a BS revisionist take(https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/clinton-trump-debate-poll-229581). The second debate did not aid Trump in the polls, if anything it helped Clinton.

Clinton had a 2 point lead before the first debate. By the end of the third debate it was up to 6 points. Her lead remained roughly at that level until the Comey letter, which by the end reduced her lead to 3 points(https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html).

[Rookie Yinzer]

Nobody cares about the debates in real life

Right. Most people have their mind made up by the time they watch the debate. They just want to see their candidate rip the other to shreds.

[Progressive Pessimist]

While it is clear that the debates ultimately didn't matter, one just needed to watch them to see that Trump was a horrible debater. I mean come on! He babbled and rambled incoherently, made weird sniffing noises, seemed constantly agitated, and came off as awkwardly out of his depth. Clinton meanwhile came off as poised, confident, knowledgeable, and competent. Even the pundits were saying so, and they would jump at any opportunity to make the race seem as competitive as possible. Those bullsh*t online polls that were spammed by Trump trolls don't mean anything. Trump simply cannot debate. He can't even be taken seriously reading a speech. That's why he loves his rallies because he can do pretty much whatever he wants.

 I guess it all worked out for him though. Because as I said before, and as others have pointed out, debates don't matter anymore. It's possible that they never mattered. Americans don't know enough about the issues to make any sort of objective judgment about them.

[jaichind]

I think all the snap polls had a majority saying Clinton won for all three debates.  Of course the margin was closer for the second debate.  Also snap polls said that Trump did better than expected.  So in that sense one can argue that Trump won the second debate.   For sure he stop the bleeding from Pussygate that came out a few days earlier.

[Averroës Nix]

What does it mean to win a presidential debate, anyway?

News networks tend to promote the debates as if they were cage matches, but they are, supposedly, meant to inform voters. Talking heads tend to focus on the "who won" question because it's an easy way to fill airtime with discussion, however vapid and uninformed: You don't need to know anything to talk about Candidate X repeating herself or Candidate Y coming off as aggressive. But it's thoughtless to accept this as the appropriate context for post-debate discussion.

I mean, if I say that a particular candidate won a debate, I could mean that:

• I'm a strong supporter of that candidate who would rate him or her as the winner in any case
• I agreed more with that candidate
• The candidate put on a more accurate performance based on what I expect a candidate to do in debates
• The candidate made better arguments
• I plan to vote for that candidate

...and so on. This is rarely specified, but even if it were there's a prior consideration: Why does it make sense to treat debates as adversarial contests? What exactly is being contested? If the results of the election are not the benchmark for deciding the winner, what else could be?

Maybe it's better to be cynical about it, and accept that televised presidential debates are a half-witted spectacle conceived by journalism's worst minds, chiefly aimed at an audience of cheer-leading partisans and slack-jawed "swing voters."

I don't know if the debates have any real effect on how people vote, but I'm confident that we would be better off if they became as much of a relic as the whistle-stop tour.

[Mr. Smith]

Because neglecting that perhaps "debate" is the wrong word for these joint press conferences where "zingers" are hurled [been that way since the CPD supplanted the League of Women Voters], and neglecting that the true winner these days of these conference arguments is whom revs up their base better at the end (to which it seems the outcome was a draw)...

Hillary really did win. Better arguments, better backing of said arguments, better performance, and better comebacks where needed.

These are the traditional ways to assess, but once again, that ignores the questionable format at heart and the utter apathy of most voters.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

The debates are like, the last vestiges we've got of a substantial policy discussion. If candidates choose to use their time rallying the troops with burns and zingers, that's they're choice, but I don't think getting rid of that platform would do any good. There are still voters out there who want to hear about policy. Don't take that away just because the media hypes up a grudge match.

[Pandaguineapig]

The consensus among most voters (rather than punditry) is that Trump won the second debate while Clinton won the 1st and 3rd debates, in the end there was no "defining moment" or clip from the debates that could move public opinion by a noticeable amount

[Xing]

Because she did if you assess them based on policy and don't grade Trump on a curve.

[Progressive Pessimist]

The consensus among most voters (rather than punditry) is that Drumpf won the second debate while Clinton won the 1st and 3rd debates, in the end there was no "defining moment" or clip from the debates that could move public opinion by a noticeable amount

Trump, at that point, had nothing to lose and went on an absolute rampage against Clinton in that debate, even more than before. That's why it's suggested that he performed better in the second debate, but he sure didn't win it. He still came off as spectacularly uninformed, out of touch, and unreasonably belligerent. But I guess it all depends on how you judge a debate: style or substance. Though in my opinion, and in my observations, he still lost in both in all three debates.

[Illini Moderate]

Hillary didn't run the best campaign, but she did very well in the debates. The second debate was the closest and only because Bill's past actions came to unfairly screw her once again.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Nobody cares about the debates in real life

Right. Most people have their mind made up by the time they watch the debate. They just want to see their candidate rip the other to shreds.

Yes, but the small minority of voters that prove decisive aren't in that mode.  It was with THOSE voters that Trump scored resoundingly.

In terms of a "debate", Hillary Clinton "won" all three "debates".  (I put this in quote because my wife was a debater in high school and college and she will assure you that the "debates" provided by the media are nothing like real debates.)  In reality, Donald Trump was a decisive winner; he used the debates to focus America on what they didn't like about Hillary Clinton.

I remember the debate where Trump got Hillary to start ragging on him.  Trump, essentially, "started s---" and Hillary started replying.  In the middle of her response, Trump says, "Such a NASTY woman!".  A preposterous comment, but Trump uttered a sentiment that the vast majority of undecided voters thought; Hillary WAS a nasty woman, NO BETTER THAN TRUMP in their minds.  Was that a logical conclusion for these folks to come to?  That all depends on what you believe about Hillary Clinton.  One thing is for certain; the bad stuff about Hillary isn't all made up of whole cloth as some assert.

[UncleVolodya]

OP correct.

[adamevans]

Hillary's best performance was the 3rd debate by far. 2nd debate was a tie, maybe even a lean Trump win, but Trump slipped in the polls because of pussygate, not the debates. It would have been a whole lot worse for Trump if he didn't make up in the 2nd debate.

[Conservatopia]

She certainly won the first debate.  Or rather (more accurately) Trump lost the first debate and his blaming the mike certainly did him no favours.

Trump performed better in the second debate but polls show that Clinton probably still came out narrowly on top.  Depending on your viewpoint you could say Trump won.
Of course we all know who the real winner of the second debate was - KEN BONE!

As the OP says though - the third debate was largely inconclusive and likely had no impact.

[IceSpear]

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.