Why Voters Thought Obama Won

[ProSense]

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Why Voters Thought Obama Won

TPM has the internals of the CNN poll of debate-watchers, which had Obama winning overall by a margin of 51-38. The poll suggests that Obama is opening up a gap on connectedness, while closing a gap on readiness.

Specifically, by a 62-32 margin, voters thought that Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”. This is a gap that has no doubt grown because of the financial crisis of recent days. But it also grew because Obama was actually speaking to middle class voters. Per the transcript, McCain never once mentioned the phrase “middle class” (Obama did so three times). And Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e. the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry. It is no surprise that a small majority of pundits seemed to have thought that McCain won, even when the polls indicated otherwise; the pundits were his target audience.

<...>

Meanwhile, voters thought that Obama “seemed to be the stronger leader” by a 49-43 margin, reversing a traditional area of McCain strength. And voters thought that the candidates were equally likely to be able to handle the job of president if elected.

These internals are worse for McCain than the topline results, because they suggest not only that McCain missed one of his few remaining opportunities to close the gap with Barack Obama, but also that he has few places to go. The only category in which McCain rated significantly higher than Obama was on “spent more time attacking his opponent”. McCain won that one by 37 points.

<...>

By this measure, Obama “won” by 14 points, which almost exactly his margin in the CNN poll.

McCain’s essential problem is that his fundamental strength – his experience -- is specifically not viewed by voters as carrying over to the economy. And the economy is pretty much all that voters care about these days.

EDIT: The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.

It doesn't get any clearer than that.






edited word.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. McLose.

[Solomon]

2. McLost

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. McCratering

[Lochloosa]

8. McGone

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

10. McAuRevoir

[Cha]

3. This is so good to read about after last night's

wavering all over the place concerning how Obama actually did!

Thanks, PS.

[Geek_Girl]

5. Great analysis

Thanks for posting.

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

6. McFail

[iamjoy]

7. I Noticed That

I had the sense that Obama really understood the needs of the middle class and the struggles they faced. I thought it was just because I am terribly biased ;-)

I think McSame showed more emotion. Although some people criticize Obama for being too cool, I almost think as an African American, he has to be. Shoot, look at the big bruhaha over Dean's "scream" and that's a white dude. Obama shows too much heat he gets labeled an "angry black man." However justified African American anger may be, it's a turnoff to a lot of Whites. That's one thing the whole Rev. Wright flap should have taught us.

Anyway, I'm pleasantly surprised to see these figures because I didn't think Obama really won. I thought that both candidates were very good at laying out their world view and that if you agree with that view, you think your guy won.

I thought Obama missed key opportunities to attack McSame, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the nastiness I sensed in McSame (I thought he was rude and condescending to Obama, while Obama was generally gracious to McSame) turned off some debate watchers.

[ProSense]

11. If I could make one wish, it would be

that people stop equating success with cheating and lying. The pundits did the same thing with Palin's speech at the Repub. Convention.

When athletes win, and then fail their drug tests, do people still claim they won?

Cheating is not success.

[KaryninMiami]

9. Worked for me- lovin' those numbers K&R

And the carefully orchestrated Biden "oist debate desserts" on every major station were the icing on the cake. Especially when it was clear that McLame's VP, Sarah Pathetic, was missing in action following the debate, clearly demonstrating that they are in deep shit with their candidate and his VP choice. Think about this week- we had the "Letterman incident", the Couric interview, the economical meltdown and Mcsame not even reading the bill after 3 days, the "I'm canceling my campaign" and then campaigning incident, the "I'm not coming to the debate unless we resolve the crisis" incident, then, finally showing up in DC and not saying a word until Obama invites him to participate in the discussion, then he shows up and-- ah yes- the conservative media saying Palin is over her head- that too happened-- then losing the debate and not having a VP to comment on anything-- I'd say the past 3 days sucked big time for their entire campaign.

I personally wanted to see Senator Obama verbally bash the shit out of Mcshame but it appears the campaign had a better idea at increasing their poll numbers. So, given how they've run this campaign so far and their expertise in ALL AREAS, state by state, who am I to dispute their technique?

[RichGirl]

12. The thing that Obama says that I think is...

...really resonating with people is that trickle down doesn't work. The economy needs to grow from the bottom up, not the top down. I think his last lines about his father believing that American was the land of opportunity. We ALL can relate to that and alarminly realize that it is no longer true.

[LiberadorHugo]

13. A message from Ronald Regan to the ignorant punditry.

There you go again.