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President Obama was seen as having outperformed Mitt Romney in the final presidential debate. The instant national and swing state polling gave Obama the edge last night. While Obama’s advantage among all voters was relatively small, he won big among uncommitted voters.
Among all voters Obama was seen as having narrowly won according to CNN polling:
Forty-eight percent of registered voters who watched Monday night’s third presidential debate say that Obama won the showdown, with 40% saying Romney did the better job in a debate dedicated to foreign policy. The president’s eight-point advantage over the former Massachusetts governor came among a debate audience that was slightly more Republican than the country as a whole and is just within the survey’s sampling error.
Nearly six in ten watchers say that Obama did a better job in the debate than they had expected, 15 points higher than the 44% who said that the GOP challenger had a better than expected debate performance.
Similarly, PPP’s polling of voters in swing states shows that a majority thought Obama had the stronger performance:
PPP’s post debate poll in the swing states, conducted on behalf of Americans United for Change, finds that Barack Obama was the big winner in tonight’s face off. 53% of those surveyed in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin think Obama was the winner to 42% who pick Romney.
Obama’s winning margin among critical independent voters was even larger than his overall win, with 55% of them picking him as the winner to 40% for Romney. The sense that Obama was the winner is pretty universal across different demographics groups- women (57/39), men (48/45), Hispanics (69/29), African Americans (87/13), whites (49/45), young voters (55/40), and seniors (53/43) all think Obama came out ahead tonight.
Most importantly, Obama won big among uncommitted voters according to the CBS News poll.
Immediately after it wrapped, 53 percent of the more than 500 voters polled gave the foreign policy-themed debate to Mr. Obama; 23 percent said Romney won, and 24 percent felt the debate was a tie. Uncommitted voters in similar polls gave the first debate to Romney by a large margin, but said Mr. Obama edged the GOP nominee in the second debate.
Mitt Romney dominated the first debate but Obama managed to win both the second and third debates by a respectable margin.
Since foreign policy simply isn’t a priority for voters at this time, I doubt Obama winning last night’s debate will significantly move the needle in his direction. Both candidates basically acknowledge that foreign policy is not what will move voters this election, so they tried as often as possible to steer the conversation to talk of domestic policy.
Obama currently holds a small lead in the swing state polls so any performance that was merely strong enough to prevent further slippage in the polls is a political victory for the Obama team. This debate was probably Romney’s last real chance to make big gains against Obama and he didn’t seem to capitalize on it.
Photo by Steve Rhodes under Creative Commons license
25 Comments
Did anyone else get the impression that Romney called for the use of drones in the assassination of foreign leaders?
The CNN polls for all the debates have been weighted markedly for the GOP, which makes the Obama wins of the last two that much more impressive:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/170748/obama-easily-tops-romney-post-debate-polls
as I mentioned below, obama won 2 and three but romney wins the season when we measure who made the aggregate gains because of the debate
clear romney from that perspective
before the debate romney just seemed incompetent and even conservatives were having a hard time thinking of him as president, that turned around quite a bit because of his over all performance for all three debates combined
Slightly OT, but fwiw, I’m still NOT seeing almost any signs for either RMoney or DMoney anywhere in the areas where I live & work.
There are more signs out now, but they’re all for down-ticket races or CA prop’s.
Interesting… I think a LOT of voters are thoroughly disgusted with their lack of choice.
Vote Third Party. I am.
My Tallahassee neighborhood is a sea of blue Obama signs, one Romney sign in front of a house leased by some FSU undergrads. We’re said to be the most liberal precinct in FL.
Interesting. Well CA is meant to be reliably “blue,” so perhaps that’s why there’s so few signs for the Oligarchy Candidates.
I did happen to overhear an elderly AA woman at the store last night on her cell phone. She was bewailing the fact that “too many young people don’t vote.” Her concern was that Mitt would be a HUGE sucking disaster, esp for the younger generations. I didn’t disagree with her “take” on Mitt, but unfortunately, I also didn’t agree with her “take” that Obama would be ever so much better for any of us, no matter which generation.
Albeit, I agreed with her that citizens should vote.
G-d how I loathe them both.
Interesting re: the signs. Don’t see many
here downtown in NYC. Some faded O signs from
last time but no new ones.
My impression was that he endorsed drones across the board, not only enemy or foreign leader assassination, but targeted American citizens.
I liked Al Sharpton’s analogy or metaphor of a boxing match wherein Romney knew he was no match to score solid punches so opted for the clinch, time and time again. His goal being to at least make it through the fight.
At this point, I think he knows he can get away with caving or lying or whatever it takes to make it to the final bell. All the far right really cares about is getting rid of Obama, then Romney will turn into a puppet for them. Add that to all who just want to get that colored guy out of the white house.
He does not need to be the “better” candidate. He even had Obama’s help to keep 3rd party serious questions out of the program.
I throughly enjoyed the Giants win last night. :)
One republican lawn sign for a state house race and my Green Party signs are all that are visible on my street.
In my very republican TX suburb, I see a lot of signs for Ted Poe (congress) and Dan Huberty (State Leg.) but not much for Romney and predictably, nothing for Obama.
Jill Stein won the straw poll in my daughters community college civics class.
Obama won?
First of all, how does that even mean anything, given what he has cone over that last four years?
Second. How does winning a contest of lying your ass off to delude voters evn merit discussion?
You act as though any of this mental masturbation means anything to the state of our union.
Well, I live in Northern Virginia in a county that voted Obama last time for the first democratic win in several decades. Now, however, all I see is Republican yard signs – in yards, along highways and secondary roads. All I can say is that it sure looks like Obama has lost an area that he needs to carry this state.
I’m surprised that anyone who still supports Obama could possibly be delusional enough to consider themselves a liberal.
Most of my friends who are still thoroughly behind Obama usually couch their political ideologies in more conservative terms. Albeit, anymore I’m doubting that most citizens even really “get” what the terminology and/or ideology – conservative v. liberal – really means.
But I am seeing more and more of my trad-Dem/reflexive-Dem voter friends and acquaintances at least acknowledging that they heavily *lean* more conservative. And so: the propoganda wurlitzer has wreaked its evil magic.
And so: on it goes…
Seriously? How could 2 out of 5 people think that Romney did a better job? Must have not been watching or have had their heads planted firmly up their asses the whole time.
I think the concept of “strategy voting” has spilled over into “strategy polling”. I’m still on a land-line phone so I get up to a half dozen poll or survey calls per week. I’m retired, kids all gone, plenty of time for such games. I’ve become quite good at soon recognizing the slants in the sources of polls.
I do answer honestly but I embellish the answers according to my own slants, even though it has no effect on results. I COULD easily choose to answer dishonestly as “strategy”. I just like to mess with the callers, who are usually young girls who sound like by granddaughters.
I love it when they always ask for my choice between Obama or Romney. I get to introduce a whole thing about Jill Stein who is not even one of the choices. Frankly, these little poll callers love it. We get a lot of laughs.
I was looking at the NM SoS site on voter registration. There has been a large increase in the number of people who register DTS, which means they do not select a political party. In NM, you are not able to vote in the primary if you do not have a candidate in your party to vote for, so if you register as a Green or Libertarian (for example), you would only vote in the primary if there are any G or L candidates on your ballot.
The Democrats still lead overall in registration. The highest percentage of voters who choose Other (which would be Green, etc.) by county is 5% in Harding County, which has the lowest population of any county, and my guess is that the Libertarians lead the O category there. Very rural, the largest town is not one I have even heard of.
The percentages of voters who select DTS range as high as 20%, and “Other” is as low as 0% (but some voters regardless). But the increase in the DTS voter registration overall was reported at 20% last night on the radio news I heard.
Clearly, people are expressing their dissatisfaction with the duopoly.
Quote from a local, “Don’t drone me bro!”
Obama or Romney. Paper or Plastic. I would rather slice my hand off than pull he lever for either of these clowns.
Anyway, looking from the outside, I think the Romney strategy for the last debate was to appeal to women. Being less aggressive than Obama might work to his advantage with women who are the big prize.
Obviously trying to lure them into his binders.
I don’t really care who supposedly won the individual debates or the “debate season.”
Two rich, poweful phonies, going through a drill tightly controlled by the RNC and the DNC for the purpose of hiding as much as humanly possible from voters.
And no matter who actually won, the winner will be whomever the media says was the winner.
My theory is that the Boomers never adopted any convictions in the first place, other than that harassing people on the basis of race and sexual orientation were unacceptable. They like their goodies–cars, houses, etcetera–just as much as conservatives; they just (sometimes) like a different kind. A lot of Republicans in our town have adopted Priuses, for example. Give any of what you’ve got for anyone else, including through taxes? A nonstarter.
Then they start to wonder why Black people are still complaining, get to feeling a little bugged by THEM, too.
Tea party people are pretty much the same people, only they came out of more racist milieus, convinced they would become rich and angry they didn’t, sure it’s welfare and Black people’s fault. (Where the poor have been hiding all the money they steal from us for all these years is one of the great unsolved mysteries.) But they wear the same shirts, drive the same cars, nourish the same survivalist fantasies.
There are a bazillion Romney/Ryan signs in SW Virginia. I’d be floored if Obama won the 9th district. In Christiansburg he appears to be person non grata.
Lacked convictons?…hmmm…I don’t know if I can buy that so generalized out-of-hand.
Regular people went to Vietnam and died after being conscripted, never mind those going voluntarily, the stupidity of it notwithstanding. Others publicly burned their draft cards, veterans threw their war medals on the steps of Congress, others defied armies of armed police, went to prisons. Others raised a revolutionary style war in the streets of the Democratic convention, others “self-deported” their lives to Canada in protest.
Northern kids signed up in their college centers to go to the American South to die for the rights of others. We marched from Selma to Montgomery unarmed and died under the batons and hooves of mounted police, and the fire-bombs of the KKK.
We joined war protests and pitted our “flowers” against M-1′s, died on the battlefield of Kent State University. Just what the fuck do you mean that we “never adopted any convictions in the first place”?
You’re generalizing more than I am, and getting high-horsey, too. I happen to be a boomer, the son of parents who got arrested climbing the Pentagon and KNEW people who got killed in Mississippi. You’re talking about 0.001% or less of the Baby Boomers. About the rest. . . I think I’ve got it right. Bourgeois to the max, although without a clue what that might mean. I’ve lived in and out of Ann Arbor most of my life; I know from such people and their sense of entitlement. . . it’s the same one right-wingers wear like chips on THEIR shoulders.
Yours could almost be a bad folk song, something on the order of A Mighty Wind. Have another late afternoon cocktail. None of those people are “in prisons;” you don’t go there for cocaine and pot, only for being poor.
You’re right, though–”convictions” isn’t the right word. I mean that their politics were superficial, never conditioned by any deeper thought or structural understanding. Little more than the fluff of bad folk songs.