Oh my god, talk about a slapdown. Soledad O'Brien asked who won the debate: Biden or Palin?
Guess how many hands went up.
Enough that Soledad O'Brien was shocked by the large majority for Biden. The follow-up questions were even worse news for McCain if this focus group is anything like independent voters. It's even worse when a Registered Republican in the focus group said that with regards to Palin's folksy anecdotes, "I don't find them ... compelling".
More damning though is that the focus group found unanimously that Barack Obama was going to win this election. Keep in mind this is a group of Republicans, Independents and Democrats. Among all of them, only a few still believed that John McCain even has a chance to win.
And in terms of how Palin might have swayed people back to the Republican party?
I counted at least a half dozen hands when Soledad asked whether or not people had made up their mind tonight to vote for Obama based on Biden's VP debate performance. There was only one hand for Sarah Palin. If the substantive debate in the coming days is about who helped their side more during this debate, I think Biden did more to help Barack Obama win this election.
Update: Paul Begala got it right as to why Biden won this. Sarah Palin didn't push much on making Obama look risky, whereas Biden was able to hammer on the "more of the same" meme and make it stick. He also made a comment that got a laugh from someone offscreen: "I think she's running for 2012."
Update x2: MSNBC snap polling after the fact has Biden winning by a large margin.
Update x3: CNN snap poll has Biden at 51% and Palin 36%. There was also a question of Palin's ability to lead pre- and post-debate. The change was within the Margin of Error so we won't really know until we get more information as to whether or not more voters actually felt like she is more capable.