How the Trump and Clinton debate played out online

Donald Trump dominated Twitter conversations online during the debate Credit: Reuters

The world watched last night as Trump and Clinton took to the stage and went head-to-head in their first debate in the race to the White House.

So what was the reaction online to Clinton v Trump?

  • Twitter

The top tweeted moments were Mr Trump's comments that he has a "good temperament", his comments on the "stop and frisk" procedure and Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton's plans for defeating so-called Islamic State.

A sales assistant watches the TV broadcast of the first presidential debate Credit: Reuters

The top five most-tweeted topics in descending order were: The economy, foreign affairs, energy and environment, terrorism and guns.

And it seems Donald Trump's Twitter past came back to haunt him when a tweet he wrote in 2012 contradicted what he was saying in the debate.

Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of claiming that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese saying “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real”

Trump then replied with “I did not say that. I did not say that.”

Unfortunately for Mr Trump the online community were quick to re-tweet his past post to show that actually he did.

"The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive" was re-tweeted the most times during the debate.

Since he made the comment it has been shared more than 80,000 times and liked more than 46,000 times.

People watch the U.S. presidential debate in a restaurant in the Queens borough of New York City Credit: Reuters

  • Searches on Google

On Google, the top five fact-checked questions for Hillary Clinton in the US were, in descending order:

  • Is stop and frisk unconstitutional?

  • How many shootings in Chicago?

  • What happened in Benghazi?

  • What emails did Clinton delete?

  • What did Clinton's dad do?

For Donald Trump they were:

  • Did Trump support the Iraq war?

  • Is stop and frisk unconstitutional?

  • How many shootings in Chicago?

  • How much money did Trump get from his dad?

  • How many times has Trump filed bankruptcy?

In a four-hour period, 54% of candidate searches on Google were for Hillary Clinton, 41% for Donald Trump, 4% for the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and 1% for the Green candidate Jill Stein.

Patrons at a US bar and grill were among the estimated 100 million viewers of the debate Credit: Reuters

  • Most used words

Word clouds appeared online showing the most frequently used words by each candidate.

Clinton's most used words include people, think, know, Donald, want communities, nuclear, business, American, Actually, kind, see, police, now, debt, economy, million, important and the word we've.

Donald Trump's most-used words also included think and people but more so than those was country according to a transcript of the debate.Other words included, money, war, Isis, take, wrong, companies, secretary, leaving, back, great, out, more, bad, new, believe, tell. bring.

  • 'Don't call 911 about the debate'

And it was not just viewers of the debate taking to Twitter to express themselves.

Police departments in the US also used the event to remind people of a few sensible practices, such as not calling the emergency services to share their anger at the debate or driving after smoking marijuana.