Hillary Clinton clear debate winner among group of undecided voters

In a clash between the two most unpopular presidential nominees in modern history, a group of undecided voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania declared Hillary Clinton the clear winner; but remained deeply pessimistic about their choices in November.

“It’s like asking me to choose between a heart attack and a stroke,” said one of the 27 voters selected and paid to participate in a focus group conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz in Philadelphia on Monday.

The visceral electoral anger that helped fuel Donald Trump’s rise during the primaries was felt in the room at the National Constitution Center where the mood was perhaps best encapsulated by Luntz’s opening question: “How the hell did we get here?”

The Pennsylvania voters shared some of the same entrenched views that voters across the country have expressed over the past 18 months. They described Clinton as a “liar”, “corrupt”, “secretive” and “self-centered”. They labeled Trump “scary”, “fake”, an “egomaniac” and a “shape-shifter”.

The battleground state voters watched the debate from a room inside the National Constitution Center while Luntz’s team tracked their snap reactions throughout the 90-minute debate. On display behind the voters were large, expressionistic paintings of an American flag, John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Trump and Clinton by artist and GOP darling Steve Penley.

At the end of the debate, 16 of the 27 participants agreed that Clinton had won while just six believed Trump had won the debate. In near uniformity, the voters said the outcome of the debate was the result of Trump’s failure rather than Clinton’s success.

Asked to react to their performances, the voters offered of Trump’s: “strong start, weak finish”, “bombastic”, “sloppy” and “verbose”. When asked to respond to Clinton’s performance, the answers were markedly positive: “firm”, “powerful”, “strong” and “informed”.

Trump struggled to defend himself against attacks by Clinton over his denigration of women, insensitivity on race relations and an assertion that he avoided paying federal taxes for years. The freewheeling Republican nominee repeatedly interrupted Clinton and drew sardonic laughs from both the audience in New York and the voters in Pennsylvania, when he claimed to have a “winning temperament”.

“He dug his own grave by just talking and talking,” said one woman named Marti G, who described herself as truly undecided.

On the monitor tracking the voters’ reactions to the candidates, which was visible to the handful of reporters observing the group, even those leaning toward the Republican nominee disapproved of his windy response when Clinton ticked off possible reasons Trump may not want to disclose his tax returns.

As the lines on the screen plummeted, Luntz, sporting a pair of American Flag Nike sneakers, bounded over to the small group of reporters. “Donald Trump just got nuked,” he said. “And I don’t know if he can recover from this debate.”

Until that point, Trump appeared to be doing a better job appealing to the firmly undecided voters in the room. He was at his best when he was railing against the political system. But support for him cratered when he began to defend his years of questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship.

Clinton wove the so-called birtherism issue – which she referred to as a “racist lie” – into a larger narrative, accusing Trump of having “a long record of engaging in racist behavior”. As she spoke, many of the voters in the room agreed with her, especially among those already leaning towards her.

After the debate, the voters lamented that too much time was spent discussing birtherism. Overall the voters rated Clinton’s response on issues of race higher than Trump’s, and after the debate several people flatly labeled the Republican nominee a racist.

“He’s come to the black community because he wants our vote, not because he truly cares about [me] as a black person,” said Ragni Lee, of Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

The group included women and men who were reluctant to support either candidate, including a lifelong conservative voter who would rather sit out than vote for Trump, a millennial who supported Bernie Sanders in the primary but has been persuaded by Clinton and a middle school teacher who says Trump “lost” her when he began denigrating Muslims.

“When I looked at my Muslim students and I knew he was talking about them, he lost me,” said Judy McDermott, who remains “really undecided”.

And yet some left the first debate impossibly conflicted and even more pessimistic than when they arrived.

“Hillary Clinton is not a good candidate and Donald Trump is just a despicable person,” Nicole Gerson, an attorney in Philadelphia, reflected after the debate. She said Trump’s criticism of Clinton steered her away from the Democrat but not in his direction.

“I’m actually thinking of voting for Gary Johnson,” she said, naming the Libertarian candidate. “Maybe the third party will finally become more viable so we’re not left with such extreme candidates. It’s a vote for the future.”