Friday's first official presidential debate offered some terse back and forth between the candidates, but few memorable moments between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama. The two sparred on the economy, the war in Iraq and on the proper approach to dealing with Iran. Most importantly, though, neither candidate made a major mistake.
Two real-time evaluations of Friday's debate found that some independents and undecided voters thought that Barack Obama came out on top.
Veteran pollster Stan Greenberg boasted the earliest qualitative analysis of how undecided voters reacted to Friday's debate. On a conference call with reporters shortly after the debate ended, Greenberg detailed the results of dial testing focus groups conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner during the debate. The firm recorded the reactions of some 45 undecided voters, who Greenberg described as mostly "Republican leaners." The early conclusion?
"We saw large shifts in favor of Sen. Obama throughout the debate," according to Greenberg. "Most saw this as a good debate for Obama."
While John McCain's favorability rating rose 9 points among Greenberg's focus group over the course of the debate, Obama's favorable numbers rose a stunning 39 points. At the outset of the debate some 69 percent of the group gave John McCain the edge on national security. That number dropped to just 44 percent after the debate.
But when it came to the issue of the day-the economy-Greenberg says neither candidate's responses moved the undecideds in his group much.
And despite the shifts toward Obama, Greenberg says there was still no consensus on a candidate post-debate. Among the undecided members of the focus group, half of them were still that way at the conclusion of the debate. The other half split evenly between Obama and McCain.
Another real-time gauge of Friday's debate came from HCD Research and the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. They teamed to offer real-time reactions of viewers on the website Mediacurves.com. HCD employed a combination of text message responses from participants and web polling to gauge which candidate Democrats, Republicans and Independents were in sync with on the debate's major issues.
With partisan viewers, Friday's debate appeared to reinforce their leanings. On all of the debate's major issues, Democratic and Republican viewers split largely along party lines, according to HCD Research. It was 80-20 along party lines on most issues.
Most telling, though, were the reactions from independents. According to HCD, independent viewers gave the edge to Sen. Obama on the lion's share of the debate's major issues. Obama did the best among independents when it came to the war in Iraq-independents sided with Obama 64 percent to 36 percent for McCain.
And on the question of who won Friday's debate, HCD's independent participants gave the overwhelming edge to Barack Obama-61 percent to 39 percen
