Obama Won
TPM has the internals of the CNN poll of debate-watchers, which had Obama winning overall by a margin of 51-38. The poll suggests that Obama is opening up a gap on connectedness, while closing a gap on readiness.
Specifically, by a 62-32 margin, voters thought that Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”. This is a gap that has no doubt grown because of the financial crisis of recent days. But it also grew because Obama was actually speaking to middle class voters. Per the transcript, McCain never once mentioned the phrase “middle class” (Obama did so three times). And Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e., the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry. It is no surprise that a small majority of pundits seemed to have thought that McCain won, even when the polls indicated otherwise; the pundits were his target audience. [...]
The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on “understanding your needs and problems” before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on “prepared to be president” to a +21.
Adds Andrew:
The more it sinks in, the more I think Obama actually knocked it out of the park last night. He is, in some ways, the inverse McCain. McCain is all drama and explosions but then … the air smells like damp, finished fireworks smoke. Obama seems calm and cautious but then … you realize he cleaned your clock.
Andrew also has the overnight Nielson ratings.
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2 Responses to “Obama Won”
[...] surprisingly seems to be giving the debate to Obama; John Windish of The Moderate Voice says “Obama won” — [...]
Greetings from the real world (U. City, MO to be exact at this moment).
Superdestroyer: Please note one quick obervation in here. (“Dole”)
Many today are consider the debate result a draw. I listened to the debate myself on the radio. I believe Obama won the debate. If there had to be a winner chosen, Obama is most people's choice. How many people have you encountered today who say McCain won?
Obama didn't win by a large margin or do exceptionally well — calm down on here and elsewhere, kids. If there has to be a real-world scale of 10, Obama won by six to four. McCain's performance was equivalent to the level of mediocrity that would have been the “bare minimum” he would have had to achieve at the GOP convention to have a chance to continue the campaign. (At the convention he did surprisingly well, in fact.) McCain's performance was tiresome (extending to the repetition of sound-bite phrases, i.e., the same ones stated more than once to answer more than one question.) Obama was not that good at all, and a decent GOP opponent could have picked and then torn him apart. The only time McCain did quite well was on the nominal issue selected for the debate, foreign policy. McCain didn't seize the occasion and dominate it, then follow through as he should have. Obama didn't provide suitable answers himself all the time, and was tiresome when he interrupted and agitated and even began whining — it may appeal to the younger Obama voters (especially given contemporary poor standards of behavior compared to past years and decades) but not to adults. Overall, Obama was more composed and even — _Obama_! — more substantial.
Superdestroyer: McCain was on the weak side in the debate, but what really caught my attention was something he did that makes me wonder if he is going to ape Bob Dole (eerily, given that McCain has threatened to be the GOP's next Bob Dole this year). He introduced — while flubbing the gesture by deprecating the item, which Bob Dole didn't do — his veto pen and said he'd use it. Bob Dole used his pocket copy of the Tenth Amendment (this from someone pushing the Americans with Disabilities Act, a gross federal encroachment into state and local affairs) in 1996, and I couldn't help but think of Dole when McCain pulled out the veto pen. It doesn't matter how likely McCain may actually use the pen (certainly more than Dubya has ever used his!). It made me think immediately of Dole. Ugh. Not a stellar start, John (R).
This was not just debate #1 but the debate on foreign policy, where Obama is very weak compared to McCain. Obama's risk in seeking this topic first has paid off, as he has an easier time now with the other subjects and I say most consider him now the stronger person so far in the debates and now, likely in this campaign.
Today I went through STL metro and noticed several Obama signs — on my old street where I lived, 12 signs alone (note to Pete Abel: that's Dartmouth in U. Heights off Delmar just past City Hall west of the Loop) for Obama but none for McCain. I stopped at a Barnes & Noble elsewhere (Manchester off I-270) and next to it was a _large_ Obama office, open and humming. People were coming to there to get yard signs and other items from Illinois as well as throughout much of Missouri. One reason: They had run out of signs at the Obama offices were these people were living. For whatever it's worth, the post-debate activity already has started among the Obama voters. (post-debate “pickup”)
Nobody on the airwaves today is making a big claim of victory and neither party truly stood out, but I wouldn't accept being forced to stay it was a draw. In my view, Obama did better than McCain did (and that is to say, I noticed one party was better than the other; I'm not forced to make a choice and would call it a draw if it truly was one). If a score must be given, Obama won 6-4 on a scale of 10, less than 60 to more than 40 if it were on a scale of 100 (probably 55-57 to 43-45 for McCain), not in the sense of the US vote share but a true scale for debates, where clear winners who truly won would score seven or eight typically.