Several early polls showed that most voters believe Vice President Kamala Harris defeated former President Donald Trump in their debate Tuesday (September 10) night, according to the polling data website FiveThirtyEight via ABC News reports.
Harris was viewed to have a better performance than Trump by 63% of respondents in the CNN/SSRS poll, 53% in the SoCal Strategies/On Point Politics/Red Eagle Politics poll and 54% in the YouGov polls conducted after the debate. Voters were evenly split at 50% on which candidate would perform the strongest in the CNN poll prior to the debate.
Additionally, 96% of Harris supporters said their candidate had a better performance while a smaller 69% majority of Trump's supporters believed he had a stronger showing in the CNN poll. The former president claimed he did a "great job" in what he called an "unfair" and "rigged" presidential debate Harris broadcasted and moderated by ABC News.
Trump, 78, called into FOX News' morning show FOX & Friends and claimed "it was three on one" after he was fact checked by ABC News moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir several times.
"I thought I did a great job," Trump said.
“It was a rigged deal, as I assumed it would be, because when you looked at the fact that they were correcting everything and not correcting with her,” he added.
“It was a three-on-one — that’s OK, I’ve had worse odds before, but never so obvious,” Trump said of the moderators. “They’re dishonest. I think ABC took a big hit last night … They ought to take away their license for the way they did that.”
Davis and Muir corrected Trump a total of four times, which many Republicans perceived as a lack of impartiality, yet the former president still believed he had a strong performance.
“I’ve been told I’m a good debater,” Trump said. “I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate.”