The final Presidential Debate has just recently concluded. While there are no official winners, POTUS Donald Trump believes he did by posting screencaps of Twitter polls.
The third and last Presidential Debate before the November 3rd U.S. elections just commenced. It was indeed a great contrast from the first face-off last September.
Of course, there were instances wherein arguments become heated. Debate moderator Kirsten Welker even gave as short as 10 seconds and as long as 30 seconds to rebut each other’s opposing arguments.
There were quite a number of important and controversial topics that were addressed. This also included a few relevant follow-up questions picked-up from the candidates’ statements itself. Such topics included:
- Climate change
- COVID-19 (and the vaccine)
- U.S. elections and apparent foreign interference
- Race (institutional racism)
- The issues on health care, particularly Trump’s current Supreme Court case against the Affordable Care Act
- Tax reforms
- National issues involving foreign countries such as China and North Korea
- Immigration
Who was the winner?
As mentioned, Presidential Debates do not announce winners, unlike academic debate competitions. Instead, the viewers participate in independent polls to decide which of the candidates argued or addressed the issues better.
The first Presidential Debate poll results favored Joe Biden, and it looks like the results are somehow the same—with the numbers varying, of course.
According to CNN‘s Instant Poll of debate watchers, 53% of the viewers believed Joe Biden won the match-up, while only 39% said Donald Trump did.
CNN instant poll has 53% of debate-watchers saying Biden won the debate v 39% for Trump — basically the same as Data for Progress, which came in at 52-41 (and is weighted to 2016 results).
Obviously Trump is not going to get the bounce he needs out of this.
— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) October 23, 2020
Meanwhile, WPRI‘s instant poll, as of this writing, had an 80% to 17% result, favoring the Democrat candidate. Although ABC 7 News‘s instant poll had a 51% – 49% current standing, with Trump bagging the lead.
Both YouGov and DataProgress reports Biden ranking higher with poll results of 54% and 52%, respectively. While, Trump gained only 35% and 41%, respectively.
#NEW Poll On Who won tonight's debate?@YouGovAmerica:
Biden 54% (+19)
Trump 35%@CNN:
Biden 53% (+14)
Trump 39%@DataProgress:
Biden 52% (+11)
Trump 41%— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) October 23, 2020
Trump floods Twitter feed with poll snapshots
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump snaps a few polls hosted on Twitter. He also retweeted the screencaps posted by his son, Eric.
— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) October 23, 2020
Accordingly, the Twitter polls include that of The Daily Wire, Sharyl Attkisson, Clay Travis, The Blaze, and The Las Vegas Review-journal. All of which had Trump having landslide results.
Although, the comments on the Political Polls Twitter poll revealed that many are expecting “Trump bots” to invade the social media polls.
Wait until Trump Bots invade this poll XD
— Waly (@waly_sayed) October 23, 2020
The polls do not directly aggregate electoral votes. These are polls that can be participated in by anyone, regardless of capability to vote.
Aside from general polls, political analysts and the media provides their opinions as to the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates during the debate.
According to Independent‘s U.S. team, Washington Bureau Chief John Bennett says “Joe Biden came out swinging tonight and Donald Trump never recovered.” Meanwhile, the POTUS “deflected blame and floated unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.”
On the issue of climate change, Trump was a bit incoherent. As Senior Climate Correspondent Louise Boyle says, “it was the same word salad as the first debate.”
Featured image courtesy of PBS NewsHour/YouTube Screenshot