Poll: Hillary Clinton scores popularity points post-debate
Hillary Clinton’s popularity among Americans is climbing, ticking up slightly after her performance in Monday night’s presidential debate, according to a new poll out Sunday.
A Washington Post/ABC News survey found Clinton’s favorability rating has crawled up four percentage points since the last time the poll was taken: she’s now up to 45 percent favorability, compared to her 41 percent two weeks ago. Clinton’s unfavorable ratings have ticked down just two points to 53 percent.
In comparison, Donald Trump’s debate performance seemed to hinder his popularity. Trump’s favorability mark among Americans had a marginal change: thirty-four percent from 35 percent two weeks ago. His unfavorable grade has increased from 59 to 64 percent post-debate.
That makes Trump’s net favorability rating a -30, compared to Clinton’s -8 among American adults. In the registered voter set, Trump’s favorability is -24. That’s compared to -12 for Clinton.
The debate itself was a loss for Trump, with nearly three times as many Americans saying Clinton won the first presidential forum, 53 to 18 percent. Seventeen percent of those who watched say it was tied, while the others had no opinion.
For his part, the GOP nominee has blamed a poor debate performance on a number of reasons, including a crackly microphone and unfair questions from moderator Lester Holt.
The survey also found that Americans viewed Trump as getting the facts wrong more often than Clinton, 47 percent to 24 percent. The party divide is evident in the responses: Fifty-three percent of Republicans found Clinton “mainly” got the facts wrong, compared to just four percent of Democrats. For Trump, 72 percent of Democrats saw Trump getting the facts wrong, compared to 15 percent of Republicans. More independents (45 percent) found Trump guilty of the mistake than Clinton (22 percent).
The Washington Post/ABC News poll was conducted Sept. 28-30 among 630 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus five percentage points for overall results.