The Debates- 2012

[agzg]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Romney won the debate hands down in terms of appearance, looking presidential, great hair, etc. I tend to favor Obama's policies. I can't imagine why Obama didn't attack Romney on things Romney has said in the past, e.g., the poor will always have emergency rooms for urgent care or the whole 47% debacle.

Trouble is, Mitt's got a crack team of spinners working with him and he has a comeback for every attack. He's extremely well coached and appears to be very practiced. Mr. President's going to have to step up his game.

Forget what he's said in the past, why didn't the President jump all over him for saying he needed a new accountant because he never got a tax break for shipping jobs overseas?

I hope the President is sharper for the next debate.

[TonyB06]

Romney the debator was much better than Romney the campaigner of the last three weeks. He won the debate.

For whatever reason President Obama was not sharp, and rarely engaged --with the exception of portions of the medicare discussion, I thought.

The President will have to step his game up in the Oct. 16 debate.

(I do have to shout-out to my 12-year-old daughter who, to my surprise, watched the entire debate last night. We had the best "debate analysis" ever on our ride to work/school this morning. You rock, EDB!)

[MysticCat]

Agree that Romney "won" the debate last night. It'll be interesting to see if and how that translates to overall poll numbers. I think traditionally, it has been the challenger rather than the incumbent who stands to benefit most from the first debate -- it his first time going up against the President, and it's a win if he exceeds expectations. (And it's more of a win if the President doesn't live up to expectations, like last night.)

But historically, even though the challenger makes gains in the polls, they have typically been modest ones. The two exceptions to that are Reagan and Carter in 1980 and Bush and Gore in 2000, where the lead in the polls flipped after the first debate.

And the analysis I have seen shows that the gains the challenger makes tends to come from undecided voters, not from wooing voters away from the incumbent. But in the Reagan-Carter instance and the Bush-Gore instance, the candidates went into the debate with about 12%-20% of those polled still undecided. Right now, most polls show the undecided slice to be around 7% or less. Where the slice of undecided voters seems to be pretty slim, a bump in the polls may not help too much. And what will really matter is the degree to which Romney is able to pick up enough of those undecided voters from the relatively few states still up for grabs.

I'll be interested to see how it plays out over the next week or so.

[Cheerio]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Agree that Romney "won" the debate last night. It'll be interesting to see if and how that translates to overall poll numbers. I think traditionally, it has been the challenger rather than the incumbent who stands to benefit most from the first debate -- it his first time going up against the President, and it's a win if he exceeds expectations. (And it's more of a win if the President doesn't live up to expectations, like last night.)

But historically, even though the challenger makes gains in the polls, they have typically been modest ones. The two exceptions to that are Reagan and Carter in 1980 and Bush and Gore in 2000, where the lead in the polls flipped after the first debate.

And the analysis I have seen shows that the gains the challenger makes tends to come from undecided voters, not from wooing voters away from the incumbent. But in the Reagan-Carter instance and the Bush-Gore instance, the candidates went into the debate with about 12%-20% of those polled still undecided. Right now, most polls show the undecided slice to be around 7% or less. Where the slice of undecided voters seems to be pretty slim, a bump in the polls may not help too much. And what will really matter is the degree to which Romney is able to pick up enough of those undecided voters from the relatively few states still up for grabs.

I'll be interested to see how it plays out over the next week or so.

During this year's campaign when I close my eyes and LISTEN to long excerpts of Romney's speeches, he sounds like Ronald Reagan in tone and especially in phrasings. Does anyone know if some of Reagan's speechwriting people are working for Romney?