A majority of Americans believe Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won Monday night's presidential debate, according to a Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll released on Wednesday.
The online poll, which gathered responses from more than 2,000 people on Tuesday, found that 56 percent of American adults felt that Clinton did a better job than Trump in the first of their three televised debates, compared with 26 percent who felt that Trump did better.
Among those who are expected to take part in the November 8 general election, 34 percent said they felt that the debate changed their view of Clinton in a positive way, compared with 19 percent who said the same of Trump, according to Reuters.
Some 31 percent of likely voters said the debate improved Clinton's chances of winning the White House, while 16 percent said the debate benefited Trump.
Despite the positive results from Clinton’s perspective, her performance at the debate seemed to have little impact on her support among America's likely voters.
The poll showed 42 percent supported Clinton while 38 percent supported Trump. Over the past few weeks Clinton has maintained a lead of between 4 and 6 points over Trump, noted Reuters.
A CNN/ORC poll published hours after the debate found 62% of Americans who watched the debate believe Clinton won, with just 27% saying Trump emerged victorious.
Monday night’s debate set a record for most viewers ever for a presidential debate, with Nielsen saying the debate averaged a total of 80.9 million viewers across 12 of the channels that carried it live.
The 80.9 million viewer total does not include PBS and C-SPAN, nor does it include the millions who watched the debate via the Internet.
Various live streams of the debate on YouTube together registered more than 2.5 million simultaneous viewers. Live streams on other sites also reached millions of people, according to CNN, meaning the actual total audience is significantly higher than 80 million.