Romney gains after debate ... with Republicans (Obama with independents)

[ProSense]

Romney gains after debate ... with Republicans (Obama with independents)

by kos

We have the first post-debate poll of the national presidential horserace, from Ipsos/Reuters. The top-lines are encouraging for everyone—Mitt Romney improved his lot, while President Barack Obama didn't lose any ground. What does that look like? Like this:

Obama 48 (48)
Romney 43 (39)

That four-point jump for Romney was real and significant and takes him from "getting blown out of the water" to merely "lagging quite a bit behind."

But I was more interested in how the debates may have impacted Romney's favorability ratings. Remember, my operating theory of this race is that as long as Romney remains unpopular, there's no way he even makes a race of it. So let's look at those numbers:



First thing to note is that the post-debate sample has more independents and fewer Democrats than the pre-debate one. No, that's not some major conspiracy. Please leave that shit for the other side. It just means that poll samples will float from poll to poll. Nothing nefarious about that.

So check it—Obama's favorables are unchanged from before and after the debate, 56-44. But looking at the crosstabs, Obama stayed solid with Democrats, gained a tiny bit with Republicans, and ... kicked ass among independents. Seriously, flipping his faves among independents from 46-54 to 54-46, a 16-point shift, is a pretty big deal.

Now look at Romney's favorables. He definitely improved, from 46-54 to 51-49. He desperately needs those numbers to improve (and improve further) if he wants to be competitive. So, good news, right?

Well, Romney improved marginally with Democrats and stayed even with independents. So where did he improve? Among Republicans, where his "very favorable" jumped a solid 10 points, from 36 to 46 percent.

So is this what Romney set out to do? Solidify his GOP base and trick some Democrats into thinking that he wasn't as horrible as they thought?

So if the point of the debate was to push undecideds into his column, he appears to have done that with Republicans (by moving left, ha ha). Congrats, Mitt! But at least according to this single point, that won't bring him back into the game.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/04/1140220/-Romney-gains-after-debate-with-Republicans-Obama-with-independents

Not sure why the pre-debate PDF numbers are different from the text report: (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021471070)

In fact, Reuters has been showing a five-point margin since Monday: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021453931





Note:

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[Jennicut]

1. Doesn't really surprise me. And Reuter's is a bit misleading with the drop in #'s for Obama.

Like you pointed out, there was no drop.

[NYC Liberal]

2. Oops! You're going to kill the meme that Obama really fucked up last night.

So Repubs, who were probably going to vote for Romney anyway, like Romney a bit more.

But independents no doubt were turned off Romney's aggressive, bullying behavior -- talking over the president and the moderator, constantly wrestling for the last word -- and lying. And they liked Obama. A lot.

Color me unsurprised. Calmer heads seem to be prevailing the morning after the unholy shitstorm.

[Lugnut]

3. +1 n/t

[DCBob]

4. I suspected there would be minimal impact.

whew!

[andym]

5. Very good news if confirmed by polls next week.

The debate's effects take about 4-7 days to assess.

Let's hope Romney's weird facial expressions and unpopular ideas have their effect.

[Wednesdays]

6. Obama: "very favorable" among Republicans more than doubled!

Indeed, such a disaster for the President!

[mzmolly]

7. Some of us expected this would be the case.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1466255

Hopefully - Rmoney's so called debate "win" - will not have any practical impact on the polls/election.

[Shuhered]

8. Obama Looked Very Presidential

I agree that President Obama fared better with Independents. I time and again try to hear new ideas from Mr. Romney. He last night solidified his ability to morph and to unsuccessfully curry favor, in my opinion. Gov Christie was not wrong in stating that people will focus more as we draw down (meeting Romney for first time, a big stretch). But I have not in recent election cycles --well, for me, since 1986) seen a man so totally skew non- facts into so many directions as Mitt has over these last 12 months. As a physician, I am also unable to trust a man who paid much less in taxes than I did, but whose wealth--arguably tied to tax dodging-- has continued to grow beyond any reasonable expectation of what 99% of the U.S. population can attain. I'm a reasonably common sense man, so please forgive me, Mitt, as I ask for an explanation of the meaning of the term " Trickle Down Government."

[ProSense]

10. Mitt definitely needs to

explain that term: "Trickle Down Government."

Welcome.

[awake]

9. Oh maybe Mitt did not have all that big win if any

We will find out next week how the swing states viewed the debate if the figures here hold up Obama will be in great shape.

Did we all here want Obama to KO Mittwhit last night you bet, but was there any real chance of that happening? no not with the M$M wanting to make it a horse race. Sure our President could had a different reaction to the "new" Romoney and maybe he could have Knocked him Out or maybe he avoided a trap by not trying to nail jello to the wall.

Yes Mitt is not out of the race today and I bet that he has the big donors writing checks right now. But what this does mean is that the supper pacs will spend more on Mitt and not move as much money to the House races as they might have if Mitt had done the face plant we all wanted to see. If we keep the pressure on and get out the vote we will still reelect Obama and have a shot at the house as well as keeping the Senate.

Hopefully everyone here got to see how really scary a Mitt Romoney Presidency would be. So let us not take anything for granted and we need to realize Obama needs our help.

[msanthrope]

11. Mitt still trying to shore up that base, eh? nt

[Honeycombe8]

12. O lost 2 pts Democrats, and gained 4 pts Republicans? Hmmmmm.

What does that mean? Probably moderate Republicans, which is very good, right?

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. It may indicate the other events of the past few days have affected people more

When the post-debate poll question was "And has the debate changed your view of each candidate?", independents said
Obama: more positive: 9%; more negative: 13%
Romney: more positive: 20%; more negative: 12%

So it's possible that other events from Sept 29th to Oct 4th have outweighed the view of independents on Obama and Romney's debate performance. Looking at the answers for policy areas and which candidate is better, Obama has suddenly started spanking Romney on the US economy (from trailing 22%-32%, to leading 29%-25%), and jobs and employment (from trailing 19-31%, to tied at 28%). Obama also increased his lead on taxes.

So I'd say that it looks like opinion in the economic area that has improved Obama's popularity among independents, but not from the debate. Maybe people have started paying more attention to ads and other communications; maybe that $17,000 deduction cap scared a lot of independents .

[ProSense]

14. Possibly. n/t