Politicana

Settle down all you emailers who are bugging me because I haven’t commented on Friday’s debate yet.  I do have something of a life (even if it does involve spending half of yesterday talking with my wonderfully geeky cousin about W.O.W. and Spore).

By now, I assume that most of you have a) formed your own opinions about how the debate went and b) have heard what most of the polls say.  In case you have not, here is where we stand:

A) My Opinion About The Debate:

My impression while watching the debate was that Obama did very well during the first 40 minutes, held his own over the next 15-20 and then lost the rest.  He was in control of the discussion on the economy.  He laid out clear plans with bullet points (just as I had suggested he do here).  He had a clear message that he repeated (ie McCain is tied to the failed Bush economic policies).  He dominated the discussion, often cutting McCain off and getting the last word on most questions.  He looked poised and in control.

However, when the discussion switched to foreign policy, McCain slowly gained the upper hand.  I say slowly because there was a transition period where neither of them appeared to be winning to me.  As McCain warmed up, his tone changed and he took control of the rest of the debate.  He dominated most of the discussion and had the last word on most questions.  He was able to show his knowledge about key internation issues and he seemed to follow the advice I gave to Biden, dropping names like crazy about all the people he had met with.  He had the clear message that he kept repeating (ie Obama is naive and doesn’t understand).  Obama looked like he was defensive and irritable. 

So, my conclusion after the debate ended was that it was a tie, with a slight tip to McCain because his strong showing came at the end and, therefore, would be slightly more memorable to viewers.  Though, I thought it was unlikely to make much difference in the polls for him (which, in the end, is about the same as a loss).

B) But I Was Wrong:

While most of the pundits I heard directly after the debates, very closely agreed with my assessment, clearly the viewing public did not.  The instant polling was coming out within minutes of the debates conclusion and continued into the night on Friday.  Since then, there was a bunch of polling done yesterday that is out today.  They all seem to say the exact same thing: most voters believe Obama won the debate. 

The ABC, CBS, CNN, and FOX insta-polls (basically small samples of undecided voters who use a dail to rate the debate as they watch it and then say what they think directly afterwards) all showed that the voters thought Barack won the debate on the economy and Iraq handily and won the overall debate by a small margin.  You could discount one or two of these polls (particularly because of their small sample size) but, when you see them all say the same thing, it should give you pause.  In fact, they thought he won in the areas I was most concerned. 

I went back and watched most of the debate a 2nd time with the CNN instant tracker of voter reactions running across the screen.  Where I was concerned he was looking weak while McCain dominated him, most viewers found McCain to be cruel and condescending.  When I was concern that all his acknowledgements that McCain was right would hurt him, viewers responded very well to them.  In some of the moments when I was most concerned that Obama was losing, he was apparently winning in most viewer’s eyes. 

Since then, follow up polling from USA Today/Gallup supports these findings.  This poll indicates that, of those who watched the debate, 46% thought Obama won, 34% though McCain won and 13% thought it was a tie.  That same poll found that McCain’s favorabilities effectively changed not at all, while Obama’s favorables were 16 points higher than his unfavorables after the debate.  On who could better solve the country’s problems, Obama won 52% to 35%.  Lastly, he widened his lead on who would do better on the economy while shrinking McCain’s lead on who would deal better with national defense and foreign policy.

I guess the question is, how did I (and the pundits for that matter), see such a different debate from most voters?  In fact, according to the Fox viewer poll, undecided voters were asked for one thing each candidate could have done better during the debate.  They said of McCain that “they wanted intensity.  They wanted to see more passion. They wanted him, quite frankly, to show more emotion.”  Of Obama, they wanted to “see some more specifics.”  Again, I had thought the exact opposite:  McCain had seemed very impassioned in the last half of the debate, while Obama appeared defensive and irritable.  Also, I thought Obama had given far more specifics than McCain did.

One possible reason for this disparity is that everyone entered the debate with their pre-determined beliefs and just had them reinforced.  The “Obama is inexperienced” meme leads voters to need a much higher level of detail from him than McCain in order to shatter the meme.  He can do better than McCain in this area (as he did) and still be percieved as weak on facts.  Likewise, we have to assume that the “Obama is charismatic” meme gets translated into an “Obama is warm, engaging, emotionally connected meme.”  So, McCain had to go above and beyond in order to break that perception.

If this is true, I think it favors Obama long-term because, if voters perceptions are already set and they are just looking for reinforcement, then voters appear to have set on liking Obama more than McCain, whether they admit it in the polls (or to themselves) or not.  This might explain why Obama has essentially been Teflon: with the expection of the novelty bubble created by Palin, he has lead slightly in the polls no matter what he or McCain does. 

It is also possible that this is a question of differing expectations.  Junkies like us know how intelligent and detail-oriented Obama is and we all fantasized about a blow-out.  Meanwhile, the average American had no idea.  They may have been wary of him.  All they knew is that he was a young, inexperienced African American so they had very low expectations of his ability to perform at the debate.  In that case, they were all very pleasantly surprised.  For more on this theory, check out this online article by Eli Saunders.

If true, that presents some concerns for us in the VP debate.  I’d really like somebody to poll people now on who they think will win that debate.  If Biden has a huge advantage, we might be in trouble.  I think the only real risk we run in this debate is that expectations for Palin may be so low that, unless she projectile vomits on the audience, it will be called a win for her.  But, jesus, what a pyrrhic victory that would be.  More likely, she fumbles through in her Putin-looming-out-of-the-ocean, broken talking points, “I’l git back wit ya” kind of way.  If Biden does some version of what I suggested, I think that debate would at the very least be called a tie.

Either way, Friday’s debate has lead to a 3 point jump for Obama in the Gallup Daily Tracker, where he now leads 50% to 42%.  In addition, come Monday when the economy is back on everyone’s mind, Obama’s numbers seem likely to at least hold their own, if not continue to increase slightly leading into Thursday’s VP. debate.  Given that McCain really needed to knock this one out of the park in order to stall Obama’s current momentum, this feels like a monumental loss for him.  One that I am not sure he can come back from.  He is unlikely to get any momentum from the VP debate.  He can hope to do well in the town hall style debate but then the final debate is all on the economy and, if Obama does as well as he did on Friday, McCain could come out of the debate season 10+ points behind in the polls.  Short of a terrorist attack, I can’t see anything changing the game at that point.