Las Vegas, US: A CNN snap poll of debate watcher find Clinton the final presidential debate on Wednesday by 52 per cent while Trump with 39 per cent, giving Clinton a clean sweep across all three of this year’s presidential debates.

However, a Quinnipiac University poll also showed Hillary is winning with female voters by 52 percent to Trump’s 37 percent.

Trump refuses pledge to respect election result

Republican Donald Trump said he might reject the outcome of the 8 November U.S. presidential election if he loses, an unprecedented challenge to a cornerstone of American democracy.

During the last of three debates against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, Trump was asked by moderator Chris Wallace whether this meant the New York businessman would not commit to a peaceful transition of power.

‘What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense. Ok?’ Trump replied.

Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state, said Trump’s comment was ‘horrifying.’

‘That is not the way our democracy works,’ she said. ‘We’ve been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.’

In a debate that for the first time focused more on policy than character, the two candidates nonetheless lashed out at each other.

Trump, 70, called Clinton ‘such a nasty woman,’ accused her campaign of orchestrating a series of accusations by women who said the businessman made unwanted sexual advances and said that both she and President Barack Obama were behind disturbances at his rallies. He said the Clinton Foundation was a criminal enterprise and as a result she should not have been allowed to seek the presidency.

Clinton, 68, said Trump himself had incited violence, belittled women and posed a danger to the United States. She said Trump, a former reality TV star, had in the past also complained that his show was unjustly denied a U.S. television Emmy award.

‘I should have gotten it,’ Trump retorted.

Debate Over Women

Trump said all of the stories about sexual misdeeds were ‘totally false.’ He called the Clinton campaign ‘sleazy’ and said, ‘Nobody has more respect for women than I do, nobody.’

Clinton said the women came forward after Trump said in the last debate he had never made unwanted advances on women. In a 2005 video, Trump was recorded bragging about groping women against their will.

‘Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth and I don’t think there is a woman anywhere who doesn’t know what that feels like,’ said Clinton, the first woman to win the nomination of a major U.S. political party.

Clinton, the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major U.S. political party, said Trump had maligned many different groups.

‘This is a pattern. A pattern of divisiveness, of a very dark and in many ways dangerous vision of our country where he incites violence, where he applauds people who are pushing and pulling and punching at his rallies. That is not who America is,’ she said.

Fading in polls

Trump entered the debate hoping to reverse opinion polls tilting away from him. Trump has raised concerns by claiming the election will be rigged against him, and has urged supporters to patrol polling places in inner cities to prevent voter fraud.

The two presidential rivals had tough but issues-based exchanges on abortion, gun rights and immigration during the 90-minute showdown, but occasionally reacted angrily.

Clinton said she would raise taxes on the wealthy to help fund the U.S. government’s Social Security retirement program, but suggested Trump might try to find a way out of paying the higher taxes.

It was then that Trump asserted Clinton was ‘such a nasty woman.’

Mexico’s peso currency, seen as a measure of Trump’s prospects, firmed to its highest level in six weeks at the end of the debate, suggesting growing investor confidence of a Clinton victory. Trump has vowed to build a wall on the border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants and has said he would make Mexico pay for it.

Battle over Vladimir Putin

Trump and Clinton battled sharply over the influence of Vladimir Putin, with Clinton calling Trump the Russian president’s puppet and Trump charging Putin had repeatedly outsmarted Clinton.

Clinton cited reports from US intelligence agencies that Russian cyber attacks had targeted her party and campaign and demanded that Trump condemn the interference.

‘They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions,’ she declared.

‘Then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the internet.’

The Manhattan billionaire appeared not to mind giving credence to the charge that he sides with Moscow rather than Washington's own intelligence agencies, declaring: ‘Our country has no idea.’

Trump argued that he might negotiate better relations with Moscow than Clinton would, declaring: ‘Putin, from everything I see, has no respect for this person.’

Clinton's response was sharp: ‘Well, that's because he would rather have a puppet as president of the United States.’

Trump blustered back: ‘No puppet. You're the puppet.’

In what has been a bitter campaign, the two White House hopefuls got off to a subdued but oddly substantive start to the debate, compared to previous brawls.

They were asked about their vision for the Supreme Court, prompting Clinton to argue the election was about ‘what kind of country are we going to be.’

She insisted gay rights and women's rights must not be rolled back.

Trump echoed conservatives who believe ‘the Supreme Court is what it's all about,’ vowing to appoint anti-abortion justices who would also protect gun rights.

‘If you go with what Hillary is saying, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby,’ he said.

‘Using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate,’ Clinton responded.

'Bad hombres'

Both Clinton and Trump threw plenty of meat to their core political bases -- ticking boxes on guns, abortion and taxes.

Trump was again on the defensive over his policy of forcibly deporting millions of illegal migrants.

‘We have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out,’ he said.

Clinton described that as an idea ‘that would rip our country apart.’

Nasty woman

Some of the sharpest exchanges came when Trump accused Clinton and her campaign team of drumming up allegations that he has groped several women.

‘I believe,’ Trump said, ‘she got these people to step forward,’ accusing Clinton of running a ‘very sleazy campaign’ and adding of the claims aired by several women dating back decades: ‘It was all fiction.’

Trump boasted, ‘I didn't even apologize to my wife,’ saying he did nothing wrong and so had nothing to apologize for.

Later, when the topic turned to taxes, Clinton suggested that Trump might try to wriggle his way out of paying.

‘Such a nasty woman,’ Trump said, leaning into the microphone.

'New Brexit'

Pundits have declared the presidential race all but over after the provocative billionaire attacked leaders of his own party and obliterated the normal rules of political decorum.

In response to Trump's attacks on the legitimacy of the vote, President Barack Obama has implored him to ‘stop whining.’

Trump's debate stance did nothing to quell fears that he and his most passionate fans might not recognize the election's outcome, thereby plunging the country into a political crisis.

Trump predicts an electoral surprise —what he calls a ‘new Brexit’—when Americans vote.

But it remains an open question whether his stunts will have a positive impact with voters.

Clinton leads by more than six points in an average of national polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.

Women especially have thrown their support to the former secretary of state, senator and first lady, who is poised to become the first female president in American history.

Clinton and Trump walked straight to their podiums when they were introduced at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, once again forgoing the traditional handshake as they did at the second debate last week in St. Louis, Missouri. This time they did not shake hands at the end of the debate either.

Clinton has struggled to get past concerns about transparency raised over her use of a private email server for work communications while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.