(Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images; Pacific Standard)
Chris Wallace has just lobbed the two candidates one of the softest—and vaguest—questions you’ll hear all night: “Tell the American people why they should elect you for president.”
For Donald Trump, this meant an opportunity to talk once more about Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street connections, and to discuss the need for law and order policing; Clinton opted to reference her lengthy experience in child care.
The American people, for one, seem to favor Clinton here. The latest RealClearPolitics poll, which follows a string of controversies around Trump (though Clinton has also seen her fair share of scandals these past few weeks), has Clinton up by seven points, 49 percent to 42 percent.
And while both candidates still score pretty low on the “favorability” scale, Clinton has managed to pull away from Trump here as well, as the graph below indicates.
(Graph: Graphiq)
We’ve wonderedaloud during the previous two debates whether Trump might be able to close the so-called temperament gap. So far — thanks in large part to the now-infamous 2005 video leak — the answer has been a resounding no.
