Suburban Women Find Little to Like in Donald Trump’s Debate Performance

WEST CHESTER, Pa. — Donald J. Trump badly needed to make an impression on women like Nancy Groux in Monday’s presidential debate. She is an undecided Republican who hungers for change in Washington and thinks business experience would be an asset in the Oval Office.

In the light of Tuesday morning, it was clear that he had made an impression — but not a good one.

Waiting here for a dress shop to open, Ms. Groux, 60, said that she thought that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, had been “presidential” in the debate, but that Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, had come across like a “bull in a china closet.”

“I truly want to like him,” she said. “I keep looking for something in him. But I can’t have my children grow up and look at him as someone to respect.”

The first of three scheduled presidential debates was the talk of suburban West Chester on Tuesday, and there was much to chew over between bites of pastry and sips of coffee on Church Street: Mr. Trump’s demeanor as he loudly talked over Mrs. Clinton and hectored her with interruptions; her smirks and grim stares as she looked at Mr. Trump; and Mrs. Clinton’s intense denunciation of Mr. Trump over his denigration of women, after he questioned her “stamina” in the debate’s final moments.

Ms. Groux, who works at a flower shop in West Chester, faulted Mr. Trump for refusing to release his taxes, and for what she called a shallowness on policy that suggested an unwillingness to consult experts.

“He doesn’t listen,” Ms. Groux said. “I’m afraid he would just make his own decisions and not listen to anyone else’s — and I don’t think that’s a way to have a country.”

This year, as in past elections, the key to carrying Pennsylvania is expected to be winning the trove of educated voters, especially women, in the counties surrounding Philadelphia. Here in Chester County, Mitt Romney defeated President Obama in 2012 by less than one percentage point; Mr. Obama won nearby Bucks County by a margin nearly as close.

In several dozen interviews on Tuesday, undecided women here consistently said that Mr. Trump had failed to win them over, and that in several cases he had repelled them.

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