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Who won the debate

Who won the debate?

  • McCain

    Votes: 10 11.8%

  • Obama

    Votes: 50 58.8%

  • Ron Paul

    Votes: 7 8.2%

  • Megalon

    Votes: 18 21.2%
  • Total voters
    85
HereticHulk said:
This debate was supposed to be a McCain meltdown. If the VP debate is anything like last night's, I think Palin will do much better than some are giving credit. These debate questions are agreed on before hand behind the scenes. I'm sure Palin is doing a lot of mock debates to prepare for this.
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This post is just filled with wrong. First, I know of NOBODY who predicted a McCain meltdown. You got evidence?

Next, your link shows the debate rules are agreed on but not the questions.

Next, every debate participant does mock debates as part of the preparation process.
 
HereticHulk said:
Even a Ralph Nader on stage would have been a great addition to call both Obama and McCain out ....
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Actually I agree with this. The best example would be the exchange where both candidates agreed we are safer now than on 9/12. It would have been nice if a third voice could have called horsepockey and pointed out how we are not. The security issue was an exercise in whitewash by both sides.
 
BenBurch said:
Correct. Obama only needed to hold things even. No need to take risks because he knows the VP debate will be a meltdown of Sarah Palin and will finish the job of sinking the McCain candidacy.
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Thats terrible logic and to say he only needed to stay even is a cop-out!

I think Obama definitely won the debate but to imply he might have only been trying to keep up to par with Mccain is just silly. Sure its going to look good when Obamas VP dominates Mccains, but wouldnt it be even more dominate if Obama destroyed Mccain in the debate?
 
BenBurch said:
No need to take risks because he knows the VP debate will be a meltdown of Sarah Palin and will finish the job of sinking the McCain candidacy.
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At the risk of thread drift, I think this attitude could well spell trouble. If the expectation for Palin is a "meltdown" and she manages to use the canned talking points to hang in there, it is a BIG Palin win. Biden was right to label her a "great debater" not because it is pure horsepockey but because it gives her room to lose.
 
Kopji said:
Especially for people with short attentions spans! msnbc broke the debate into blue and red segments, as well as topical:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/#scroll_debates
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the MSNBC survey of 144,644 votes has 79% calling it a win for Obama. Pretty much the inverse of the phone poll Fox news ran which had it 80% for McCain. It's almost as if there are 2 separate countries out their speaking different languages.
 
gdnp said:
the MSNBC survey of 144,644 votes has 79% calling it a win for Obama. Pretty much the inverse of the phone poll Fox news ran which had it 80% for McCain. It's almost as if there are 2 separate countries out their speaking different languages.
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Not at all. It's just two different viewerships. Viewers are going to favor the candidate who says what they want to hear, so they're always going to tilt the "who won" question towards whoever holds positions closer to their own. So without a complete blowout (which certainly didn't happen, I think that much is clear from either side), any such poll is going to tilt quite heavily in the direction of the viewership's prior leanings. Which is why such polls are basically useless. All this is telling us (which, really, anyone paying attention should have known already) is that Fox's viewership leans Republican and MSNBC's leans Democrat.
 
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According to McCain, he won because the media, who apparently hates him, called it a tie.
“I was a little disappointed the media called it a tie but I think that means, when they call it a tie, that means we win,” McCain said during a telephone call that was caught by cameras filming him at his campaign headquarters.
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Give it a rest, John. :rolleyes:
 
Here's another poll that clearly labels Obama as the winner in Friday's debate...

Obama Bested McCain 48%-34% in 1st Election Debate, Poll Shows

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Viewers of the first presidential debate said Barack Obama did the better job during the event two nights ago, with 48 percent choosing the Democratic candidate compared with 34 percent for his Republican rival John McCain, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll. ...
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MattusMaximus said:
Here's another poll that clearly labels Obama as the winner in Friday's debate...

Obama Bested McCain 48%-34% in 1st Election Debate, Poll Shows
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Here's a more extensive story on that poll:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/27/debate.poll/index.html
"Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as independents."
Given the slant in viewership, why would anyone consider these results significant? The tilt in "who won" follows the tilt in who watched. To draw any conclusion beyond that is unwarranted.
 
Interesting. I just talked with a friend who is an Obama supporter who listened to the debate on the radio, and she says that McCain won hands down, which agrees with what another poster who listened on the radio said. It sounds like body language was a big factor for the TV viewers.
 
The thing is with the momentum obviously moving toward Obama, ties or even marginal wins are not enough for McCain. He needs a decisive victory in the next debate.
 
gdnp said:
Interesting. I just talked with a friend who is an Obama supporter who listened to the debate on the radio, and she says that McCain won hands down, which agrees with what another poster who listened on the radio said. It sounds like body language was a big factor for the TV viewers.
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Shades of the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy debate, where people who listened to it on radio thought, by a huge majority, that Nixon had won,whereas, due to a bad make up job that made Nixon look old and tired, people who watched it on TV..the vast majority....thought Kennedy had won.
 
dudalb said:
Shades of the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy debate, where people who listened to it on radio thought, by a huge majority, that Nixon had won,whereas, due to a bad make up job that made Nixon look old and tired, people who watched it on TV..the vast majority....thought Kennedy had won.
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I've heard that before. But I'm starting to doubt the explanation. Is there any evidence that that was the reason for the discrepency? Because it seems more likely to me that there was a demographic difference between the two audiences.
 
Ziggurat said:
Here's a more extensive story on that poll:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/27/debate.poll/index.html
"Of the debate-watchers questioned in this poll, 41 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans and 30 percent as independents."
Given the slant in viewership, why would anyone consider these results significant? The tilt in "who won" follows the tilt in who watched. To draw any conclusion beyond that is unwarranted.
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Ah, I had not seen this deeper analysis of the poll. Thanks for bringing it up - it certainly puts things in perspective.

Damned polls :mad:
 
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