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"I let Ann decide everything about the kitchen. That sound like a policy from a man who doesn't respect women? - Romney
http://t.co/...
— @TheOnion via web
:
Nielsen said 65.6 million viewers watched the Tuesday night town hall format event on television at home, down just 2.4 percent from the debate on Oct. 3. Untold millions more watched the two debates on TV sets in public places and watched on computers, phones and tablets, but those viewers are not counted in Nielsen’s totals.
Reuters:
Voters say that President Barack Obama performed better than Republican rival Mitt Romney by a substantial margin in their second debate, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.
Forty-eight percent of registered voters gave the victory to Obama, while 33 percent say Romney prevailed in the Tuesday debate, the online poll found.
The poll reflects the broad consensus of debate observers who said Obama's forceful approach gave him the upper hand over Romney, who was widely seen as the victor in their first matchup on October 3.
Don't believe pundits who are working the rope lines trying to portray the debate as a tie. It wasn't.
NY Times:
Polls in September that showed Mr. Obama with a lead of eight or more percentage points in Ohio and elsewhere were a “fantasy,” [David Plouffe] said. The president’s margin of victory in battleground states was going to be “one, two, three, four points at most.”
“In those states, if the election were held today, I’m as confident as anything I’ve been in my life, that we would win the election,” Mr. Plouffe said. “I assume tonight’s debate performance will strengthen that a little bit. I think it will provide some more excitement for Democrats and our supporters as Romney got additional enthusiasm off his debate.”
“But the structure of the race is pretty established,” he added.
Tight race, slight Obama lead.
Nate Silver:
It continues to be noteworthy, in my view, that in slow news cycles — as in most of the spring and summer months — the polls have generally converged to show an overall advantage for Mr. Obama of about two percentage points. After his best news cycles, like after the Democratic convention, Mr. Obama pulled ahead in the polls by four to five points, while Mr. Romney remained about tied with Mr. Obama after his best series of events. But some of these effects could be artificial, as a result of nonresponse bias.
Perhaps the New York debate — viewed as a modest win for Mr. Obama by instant reaction polls — will reset the news cycle to a neutral enough point that the potential effects of nonresponse bias will be reduced, giving us a test of YouGov’s hypothesis.
On the other hand, it’s possible that Mr. Obama’s “win” in the debate will seem more definitive in the coming days, and that he’ll get a bigger bounce in the polls. If so, there will be some reason to be suspicious of it.
Tight race, slight Obama lead. Sounds familiar.
TPM:
[Mark] Mellman believes it will be five or six days before the impact of the debate on the election becomes clear, but said early national polls will show some indication. “Obama went into this debate as a slight favorite for re-election; he comes out of it as a somewhat stronger favorite — in what will still likely be an extraordinarily close race,” Mellman said.
Juliet Lapidos:
For Democrats, last night’s debate was undoubtedly an improvement over the last. But there were at least three moments that should have upset liberals—as opposed to partisans.
All true, but I can't get all excited about it 3 weeks before the elections. Should (as I believe) Obama win, then hold his feet to the fire.
EJ Dionne:
For Obama’s supporters, the fact that the president played offense, had a strategy and seemed happy in his work was reason enough for elation. But the most electorally significant performance was Romney’s. Under pressure this time, the former Massachusetts governor displayed his least attractive sides. He engaged in pointless on-stage litigation of the debate rules. He repeatedly demonstrated his disrespect for both the president and Candy Crowley, the moderator. And Romney was just plain querulous when anyone dared question him about the gaping holes in his tax and budget plans.
EJ is too nice to say it, but Romney is a dick, and it comes out at various and sundry times.
WaPo:
A series of missteps by Republican nominee Mitt Romney in criticizing President Obama’s account of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, may make it far harder for him to continue using the incident as the heart of his wider complaint about the incumbent’s foreign policy record.
You know, he really is the arrogant SOB that people say he is.
Dana Milbank:
I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years,” Romney said. “It’s going to help Jeremy get a job when he comes out of school.”
The candidate’s statement, a version of a claim he has made for months on the stump and in a new ad, was bold, precise — and baseless.
Oh, and he lies a lot, too.
