The Debates- 2012

[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?