Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Who won the first 3 debates?

Who won the Palin/Biden debate and the first two McCain/Obama debates? The vast majority of the experts who discussed it in the media immediately following the debates seemed to think they were basically draws – no clear winner. But those were all opinions. What are the facts?

As reported in this morning’s New York Times the latest Times/CBS News poll show a 14 point lead for Barack Obama.

After several weeks in which the McCain campaign unleashed a series of strong political attacks on Mr. Obama, trying to tie him to a former 1960s radical, among other things, the poll found that more voters see Mr. McCain as waging a negative campaign than Mr. Obama. Six in 10 voters surveyed said that Mr. McCain had spent more time attacking Mr. Obama than explaining what he would do as president; by about the same number, voters said Mr. Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking.

Over all, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 percent of those determined to be probable voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama and 39 percent said they would vote for Mr. McCain.
Read the entire article.

Remember that up until the debates the polls showed the race to be pretty much a dead heat. Also remember that the elections of 2000 and 2004 were extremely close, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College. For the Democrats to have opened up a double digit lead in 3 weeks shows that the debates were a total disaster for McCain/Palin and a stunning victory for Obama/Biden.

As all the experts discuss tonight’s debate will they acknowledge how incorrect their analysis of the previous 3 debates has turned out to be? Not likely. Being accountable for performance is apparently just for school teachers and administrators.

No comments: