( – promoted by Colorado Pols)
Update 8:30 p.m.: Denver’s Fox 31 also brought together a group of 12 undecided voters yesterday, and I regret that I did not include Fox’s story in this post. Read it here. Fox 31′s undecided voters did not give Romney the victory. After the debate, one was leaning toward voting for a third party candidate, one toward Romney, and one toward Obama. Another was planning to vote for Obama. A fifth waa leaning toward an unspecified candidate.
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Colorado news outlets are reporting that Mitt Romney won last night’s debate (e.g., Denver Post “Round One: Romney”), but we all know it’s the undecided voters who count, and news stories about undecided voters in Colorado showed that they mostly weren’t swayed by the debate.
For example, 9News’ Kyle Clark asked a focus group of 12 undecided voters in Colorado who won the debate, and more said that Obama did.
Clark: Who thinks President Obama decisively won tonight’s debate?[A third of the group raised their hands]
Clark: Who thinks Mitt Romney decisively won tonight’s debate?
[One man raised his hand]
Clark: Was any person in this room convinced to cast their vote for one man or another based on what you saw here tonight?
[No one raised a hand]
Clark: Not a single person in the room was convinced.
The Denver Post’s focus group of Colorado undecided voters came to pretty much the same conclusion, reporting that most members of its focus group were still on the fence.
The truth is, in Colorado, the best evidence we have so far about what really matters, the undecided voters, shows that the debate was, as 9News political analyst Ryan Frazier, a Republican, put it, “a bit of a wash.”
Yet the tenor of news coverage in Colorado, blaring a Romney win, did not reflect this reality. 9News and The Post both did the right thing by convening focus groups of undecided, even if the Post should have better spotlighted what these voters had to say.
Full story: CO media say Romney won but CO news stories on CO undecided voters don’t support this
I mean seriously, a dozen people in a room?
Realistically, Romney probably picked up some support from undecideds based on last night’s performance – at least temporarily. Whether that support will continue over the next 30 days depends on a lot of things.
And perhaps what one expects from a presidential debate.
To me, it seems that presidential and vice presidential debates are more about a) coming across as “presidential,” and b) not screwing up. If you think about most of the memorable, pivotal debate moments since Kennedy-Nixon, they’ve never been about someone’s great factual points or presentation of vision. It’s been demeanor (sweaty Nixon vs cool JFK), or zinger (there you go again; you’re no Jack Kennedy), or screw up (Dukakis on the rhetorical question of his wife being raped and murdered, Palin’s folksy act falling flat, “there you go again” part 2). That might be an indictment of the average voter and their grasp of politics and policy more than the candidates themselves, but the fact is that these are won ON points, not substance.
That said, while I give the win to Romney, it’s like a 28-24 football victory, not 70-3. To Romney’s credit, he was better prepared, both with the talking points and for the pressure. To Obama’s detriment, he was not as prepared, and wasn’t willing to bring down the hammer when Romney gave him the nails. That Romney DID expose himself was to the detriment of HIS performance; that Obama didn’t screw up is to his credit.
Getting more to the point of this diary, the only Colorado news story I heard was on CPR this morning, and the independents there gave Romney the victory. BUT… they remained undecided. Which is proof that Romney by no means won in a beat down.
The only way this debate makes an impression on US political history, is because of Jim Lehrer’s poor performance as a moderator. (Unless some miracle happens for Mitt and he wins – then this will be seen as a turning point. But today I can’t conceive of such a thing.)
Only one “undecided” voter on the Denver Post panel says she was now for Romney — Susan Donlan-Roy, retired law enforcement. Here is her previously undecided reasoning:
Yeah, you made your decision in 2008.
And, let’s look at their “undecided” panel: Two are registered Republicans and one is a Libertarian. None are registered Democrats.
What a crock.
Better job fact-checking, obviously, than the Denver Post!
then I’d guess it must be. Because he’d recognize a mediocre political performance if he saw one.
Frazier knows mediocre, that’s for sure. He doesn’t know how to do what Romney did last night.
We see it in your every post.
Lie like there’s no tomorrow?
http://www.rollingstone.com/po…
I asked Post reporter Jeremy P. Meyer, who wrote the newspaper’s article on the focus group of undecided voters, to clarify the impact that the debate had them. Meyer told me that of 15 undecided voters interviewed, 14 appeared to be still undecided and one person was now going to vote for Romney. Of the remaining 14 people who were still undecided after the debate, five were leaning more to Romney and three thought Obama did a better job, Meyer said.
Clearly you have to score the debate a win for Romney but it doesn’t look like most undecided Colorado voters saw it that way (undecideds at this point are certainly not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Sorry) or found this debate to be a very important factor in their decision.
The only reason this is so upsetting for Obama supporters is that it breathes some life into the Romney campaign where a clear Obama win and weak looking Romney would have continued the pre-debate trajectory without a blip. It’s close so we definitely didn’t want to see that blip.
Still, this should make us feel a little better.
McLuhan argued that television was a “cool” medium, rewarding those who keep their cool, as Obama did. For reporters at the debate, where you have the smell of the greasepaint and the polite murmurs of the crowd, Romney’s aggressiveness looked good. Watching in the comfort of my home with my wife, we both thought Romney’s “hot” attacks did him more harm than good.
OK, the media scores it as a “win” for Romney. But sitting there explaining how he’s not really going to wreck my medicare, though he will screw my kids out of there, didn’t impress me. Charlie Crist made much the same point on MSNBC today.
Who’s right: Marshall McLuhan or Chris Mathews? To ask the question is to answer it.
seem to spend most of his waking hours over-heating.
Obama could have totally kept his cool and been totally polite, but still obliterated Romney – knocked him out of this race – with only one or two well-delivered, polite, calm sound bites pointing out the Republican’s hypocrisy.
It’s not so much that Obama “lost” the debate – he committed no gaffes – but that he lost the opportunity to put Romney away once and for all. And it would have been so easy!
but I thought Romney’s squinty patronizing smirk was irritating as hell. Did nobody else see that?
the staredown with the President and the watery eyes.
I get lying for the lord is ok and all, but he was weird.