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President Obama’s extremely poor performance during the debate last week gave Mitt Romney a real opportunity to make up some ground. According to Gallup, Romney’s position in their national tracking poll improved significantly after the debate. From Gallup:
The first presidential debate went decidedly in Romney’s favor. The debate appears to have affected voters to some degree, given the narrowing of the race in the three days after the debate compared with the three days prior. Still, the impact was not so strong that it changed the race to the point where Romney emerged as the leader among registered voters. Rather, at least in the first three days of Gallup tracking after the debate, the race is tied.
But even that small movement is significant, given the competitiveness of the race throughout this presidential campaign year and the fact that debates rarely transform presidential election races.
In addition to improving his standing in the Gallup national poll, there are signs that Romney strong performance in the debate helped him close the gap with Obama in individual swing states. PPP found that Romney show a significantly gains in Wisconsin and a modest improvement Virginia.
The first presidential debate was to be one of the first big unforced errors for the Obama campaign this cycle.
18 Comments
Is Romney ailing? looks sweaty, clammy, voice weakened today
Given that obama is not coming out strong for the safety net, he could be in trouble. Maybe he will see the light but don’t count n it.
Many of us here on FDL have argued that the partisan wrangling is just theater. Well, that’s what the American public wants. Romney “won the debate” based on performance, not on the validity or wisdom of what he said.
People are stupid and politicians are corrupt.
Blog title:
post-DEBATE polling bounce?
What about that YouTube of rMoney cheating with his notes? Why is that being ignored?
True to form. Obama has a talent of reacting to events. He then knows the ground and can react accordingly.
Being proactive? Out in front? Not so much. Look at his Governing record.
because he wasn’t cheating, he was lying. That white thing was a handkerchief, he used it about a quarter into the debate.
0 just happened to suck.
Electoral college woul;d need to move a BUNCH to make a difference in the outcome.
Not likely.
Around 67 million people in total watched the debates. My suspicion is that a good chunk of those were partisan warriors who aren’t changing their minds no matter what. On the other hand, there are ~310 million Americans.
So, riddle me this, considering the vast bulk of persuadable America didn’t even watch … what are the chances that it was actually Romney’s unseen performance that is causing the movement in poll numbers? That seems to be an unsustainable conclusion, IMO.
Who, or what, do you imagine folks who didn’t watch the debates may have encountered that could have started driving their opinion in a different direction? (Hint: it’s the same “who or what” folks encountered when Romney was being cast as the goat of all media with a shitty convention against Obama’s stage-managed-to-their-satisfaction productions and general goodness … which has served to drive polls the other direction up to this point)
Perhaps people are stupid, and indeed politicians are corrupt. But neither observation has much to do with how or why our media organizations use their platforms to drive public opinion in whatever direction best suits their corporate business plans.
A horserace makes the most money for those who sell our politics on TV for money … so a horserace we will have. The only comforting thing about a fully corrupt system is that it doesn’t really take rocket surgery or legitimate political analysis to figure out what’s going to happen next vis a vis establishment actors … on anything … just follow the money.
Oh, have a heart — we don’t want Jon to quit show business.
Well, not until he learns how to write.
That’s just great. What the fuck IS Obama? He disturbs the hell out of me.
There is a real question whether Obama CAN come back in the next debates. His failure in the first debate was not primarily a failure of style but rather one of substance–his positions on most issues are not really much different from those of Romney. Given the lack of difference between the candidates, a debate between them becomes a matter of style. Stylistically, Obama is a terrible debater. It is his weakest feature as a campaigner, as shown repeatedly during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. The debating hopes of the Democrats will rest on a crushing performance by Biden over Ryan (which can be expected, as Biden was far and away the best debater in 2008). Unfortunately for the Dems, the VP debate has a lower viewership.
Your post presents a set of assumptions that I won’t bother addressing. Those who are not paying attention are not even up for discussion. Why would they matter?
All of the commentary about “who won the debate” was centered on the performance of the candidates. Period. Later fact checking seems to have gotten little attention and has had little apparent effect, even though Romney was far more guilty of making misstatements. Obama certainly did not do a good job of presenting his arguments and he missed opportunities to challenge Romney’s bull shit, but the key is presentation. The shift of a couple percentage points is due to style over substance.
P.S. Not all 310-million Americans are eligible to vote (children) and not all those who are eligible to vote do vote.
I think you mean that Romney got a post DEBATE bounce. The convention is long over.
Exactly. While many want him to, I’m not convinced O can pull off a debate ‘victory’. Whatever that actually means.
During the debate I felt Obama couldn’t compete with the essence of Romney’s attack since what we have in Obama is a Republican disguised as a populist Democrat. Hard to fight with Mitt who uses better Republican logic than O tries to, especially after he constantly paints himself into their corner.
For all the world it looked like the President was just tired and tired of the job. With all the grief that he has been catching recently (Libya, economy, Afghanistan, jobs … ) I wouldn’t blame him if he just wanted to give it all up.
Romney isn’t remotely Presidential. He has no character, he’s a brazen liar, tax cheat, and pisses off every country he visits because he’s so used to laughing at his own bullshit and not giving a damn about who he’s talking to.
You’ve just described the post modern President. Willard is everything you say and more. He’s a personification of what this country has become.
National polls mean squat. About a half dozen states will decide this election. Even if Obama were to get less of the popular vote and win the EV, it’s not like this would be an anomaly. The Right Wing will just have to bend over and accept it, just like many of us had to do in 2000.