More respondents in a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey online poll changed their opinion of Donald Trump for the better after the second presidential debate on Sunday.
This, despite his aggressive tone and body language toward Hillary Clinton and the release two days earlier of lewd remarks about women he made on tape in 2005.
After Sunday's faceoff, 23 percent of respondents changed their opinion of the New York businessman for the better compared with the 13 percent who did so after the first debate. Clinton saw the opposite result with just 17 percent of respondents saying they had a more positive opinion of her after the debate, less than the 26 percent that did so after the first debate.
But more voters also changed their opinion of Trump for the worse, 29 percent after Sunday compared with 26 percent after the first debate. Clinton saw 23 percent of those polled saying they had a worse opinion of her after the second debate, greater than the 17 percent that did so after the first debate.
Overall, Clinton came out ahead, but she won by a narrower margin than compared with that of the first debate. In the survey, 44 percent of likely voters declared the Democratic nominee the winner, while 34 percent said Trump won, and 21 percent said neither one. The online poll of 3,834 people, conducted Oct. 10, carries an error margin of 2.5 percentage points.
The NBC News/Survey Monkey poll conducted after the first debate found that 52 percent of likely voters said Clinton won, while just 21 percent said Trump did.
In general, survey respondents had negative feelings about what both candidates would do if elected to the Oval Office — 56 percent said they would be "concerned" or "scared" if Clinton were elected compared with 63 percent who felt that way about Trump being elected. Nearly half of those polled, 44 percent, said they would be "scared" if the GOP nominee were elected, compared with the 32 percent that felt "scared" of a Clinton presidency.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to show that Hillary Clinton saw 23 percent of those polled said they had a worse, not better, opinion of her after the second debate.