Elections

Trump declares victory at debate by citing the internet

Donald Trump overwhelmingly won Monday’s presidential debate, if you ask Donald Trump.

The Republican nominee cited multiple snap polls, or unscientific internet polls that allow anyone around the world with computer acccess to declare a winner.

It will be a few days before scientific polls begin to trickle out. Scientific polling attempts to recreate the conditions of the actual electorate with a representative sample of voters.

CNN attempted to recreate a scientific poll in the immediate aftermath of the debate and declared Hillary Clinton the winner by a 62 to 27 percent margin.

The sample of 521 registered voters skewed heavily Democratic, 41 percent described themselves as Democrats, 26 percent described themselves as Republicans, and 33 percent described themselves as independents or members of another party.

Trump trashed CNN’s poll on Twitter.

Pundits generally declared Clinton the winner of Monday’s debate. Trump surrogate and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Trump should drop out of the next two debates because of moderator bias.

"If I were Donald Trump I wouldn’t participate in another debate unless I was promised that the journalist would act like a journalist and not an incorrect, ignorant fact checker," Giuliani said.

Alex Daugherty: 202-383-6049, @alextdaugherty

This story was originally published September 27, 2016 at 12:57 PM with the headline "Trump declares victory at debate by citing the internet."

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