The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Posted by
CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser


...  Obama's aggressive strategy led the debate audience to give him a narrow 51%-46% edge on leadership, but it may have come at the cost of likeability.

"A majority of debate watchers said that President Obama seemed to be the stronger leader," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "But on the question of likeability, the two candidates are essentially tied on a trait that has generally been an advantage for Obama. That's probably due to the fact that two-thirds of debate watchers felt that Obama spent more time than Mitt Romney on the attack."

But according to the poll, both candidates were seen by debate watchers as able to handle the responsibilities of commander in chief - an important threshold for Romney since he is not the incumbent. But men and women see the commander in chief question very differently.

Majorities of both genders saw Obama as capable of handling that role, but women were split roughly 50/50 on whether Romney had proven himself on that measure, while men responded well to Romney's performance. Women also saw Obama as the stronger leader; men saw Romney as having the edge on leadership. As a result, women saw Obama as the winner of the debate by 22 points, while a plurality of men saw Romney as the victor on Monday night.

Bottom line: The debate appears to be a draw when it comes to affecting the vote of those who tuned in to the faceoff.

It's funny to me how blatantly slanted people can be. If you think that was an arse kicking you obviously are biased.

I, like most people, think Obama won the debate but I also don't think Romney was there to debate. Winning the debate was not his priority as it wasn't a contest.

I specifically compared it to the first debate, which was categorized here as a "monumental ass-kicking" (and none of your comments at the time seemed to refute that).

I certainly would have been glad to hear that debates are not actually contests to be won right after the first debate.  Somehow, that point didn't seem to come up at the time.

  The first debate caused people to start backing Romney

I wouldn't have said that but it was the largest margin of victory ever recorded for a debate. 

A thread based on one cbs poll. LOL

^^^ And the die-hard partisan voters are better? I'd say that's the worst part for the country.

High school and college debates are for winning. There are probably other tyoes of debates as well. These debates are to get votes. At the end of the day if Obama lost every debate by 70% but won over the voters because Romney came off as an angry, war mongering racist then it wouldn't matter. It's not about peppering your opponent with points they don't counter (which will win a debate) if no one cares about the point being made.  The first debate caused people to start backing Romney so regardless of if he won the debate or not it did what he wanted.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57537795/poll-decisive-win-for-obama-in-final-debate/

53% Obama - 23% Romney

This is as compared to the 46%-22% victory (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7424218n) for Romney in the first debate, and the 37%-30% victory for Obama (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50133279n) in the second debate.  Not that debate polls matter.  Unless the Democrat loses... then it's a Game Changer!

Romney was clearly out of his depth in foreign policy and kept trying to pivot back to the domestic economy.  How many times did he say, "I agree with what President Obama is doing" on foreign policy?  This was a bad subject for Romney.  I mean, just listen to his closing arguments: this is the foreign policy debate, and yet Romney made zero mentions of the war, our military, or anything foreign-policy-related beyond "promoting principles of peace to make the world a safer place."  He looked clueless, and the right can't even complain about the moderator this time.

Of course, since the media only has an interest in down-to-the-wire horse-race politics, expect this brutal beatdown to be quickly swept under the rug as "having no impact," unlike Romney's less-decisive first-debate win that was immediately proclaimed a crippling blow to Obama.

Again, it would have been great to hear this fresh new perspective on how "debates are not about winning" right after Romney won.  Because right now, it sounds like the spin one would give if their guy just got hammered.

I also find it kind of puzzling that Romney winning the first debate is somehow completely divorced from the shift in the polls following it, as if they shifted not because he won, but because he convinced people.  When you win a debate, that almost always means you had a more convincing argument than your opponent.  That's what winning a debate IS.

So was this one.  It was wider. 

According to CBS, hardly a conservative media outlet, a focus group poll of Ohio undecided voters. They seem to think that Romney won the debate. http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/23/video-cbs-focus-group-in-ohio-picks-romney-the-winner/ (http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/23/video-cbs-focus-group-in-ohio-picks-romney-the-winner/).

Please explain. Am I missing something?

Debate 1 was 52% for Romney on the Gallup

Debate 3 is 30% for Obama on CBS

Listen, I already said I thought Obama won. Now if the polls don't slow down for Romney what difference does it make? It doesn't. The only thing that matters is winning voters and I know you are smart enough to realize winning a debate and winning voters are not exactly the same thing.

Focus group of... 8 people.

Details, details.

Yes, and they though that he won. And they were from Ohio. Kind of dismissive since you don't like their opinions, huh ?

If Romney wins Ohio 75-25, I will take that "focus group" as a prescient indicator of the state of the Ohio electorate.

I mean, do you think that Romney had a dominating performance in that third debate, over twice as good as his performance in the first one?  Because CBS (the same organization) had Romney winning the first debate by a 24% margin, as opposed to the 50-point win from that focus group you are citing.

You say that as if I should expect respectful policy concessions from the right if Obama wins.

The Republicans got blown out at historic levels in 2008 and the only result was that they got louder and more obstinate (e.g. setting records for number of filibusters).  And I'm supposed to believe that making a response thread to Team Red's gloating over the first debate might make things harder for me to live down?  Come on, now.