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http://www.gallup.com/poll/157907/romney-narrows-vote-gap-historic-debate-win.aspx

According to Gallup, it's an even race now.

"Frag Out"

Debate? Wasn't that, like, last week?

 daedalus wrote:
Debate? Wasn't that, like, last week?

It usually takes a while for the polls to even out and collect enough surveys post-debate to make a call on the impact it had.

 daedalus wrote:
Debate? Wasn't that, like, last week?

It's like d-usa says, it takes a few days to get an idea of the full results.

Don't most of the tracking polls keep anywhere between 3-7 days worth of questions as the "current" poll to reduce the margin of error a bit and keep weird statistical bumps in check?

 d-usa wrote:
Don't most of the tracking polls keep anywhere between 3-7 days worth of questions as the "current" poll to reduce the margin of error a bit and keep weird statistical bumps in check?

Good question According to Gallup, it appears to be a seven day span. What was interesting was the clear majority of Democrats the called the debate in Romney's favor.
I did like Gore's comment about the air in Denver causing Obama's poor performance.

Romney did do a lot better. I would think that even MSNBC would call it that way.

I don't think the whole Denver thing is a good excuse, especially considering that Obama gave one hell of a performance during his speech there in 2008.

I don't know if he just walked into the thing way to confident, or if he tried to hard to be a nice guy and not call Romney on anything. The next one is a town hall, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. I don't think it is as easy to attack your opponent during that format, so I am not too sure how both guys will interact with each other.

A good summary of the last debate:

 d-usa wrote:
Romney did do a lot better. I would think that even MSNBC would call it that way.

I don't think the whole Denver thing is a good excuse, especially considering that Obama gave one hell of a performance during his speech there in 2008.

I don't know if he just walked into the thing way to confident, or if he tried to hard to be a nice guy and not call Romney on anything. The next one is a town hall, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. I don't think it is as easy to attack your opponent during that format, so I am not too sure how both guys will interact with each other.

A good summary of the last debate:

Obama's never been a particularly good debater. He's a good orator. He looked good in 2008 because he was debating McCain, against whom several houseplants in my possession would stand a 50/50 shot of winning.

Hillary ate Obama up in the primary debates.

 Seaward wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Romney did do a lot better. I would think that even MSNBC would call it that way.

I don't think the whole Denver thing is a good excuse, especially considering that Obama gave one hell of a performance during his speech there in 2008.

I don't know if he just walked into the thing way to confident, or if he tried to hard to be a nice guy and not call Romney on anything. The next one is a town hall, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. I don't think it is as easy to attack your opponent during that format, so I am not too sure how both guys will interact with each other.

A good summary of the last debate:

Obama's never been a particularly good debater. He's a good orator. He looked good in 2008 because he was debating McCain, against whom several houseplants in my possession would stand a 50/50 shot of winning.

Hillary ate Obama up in the primary debates.

He is a good orator with a teleprompter in front of him.

I will give him credit though, he sounded like a much more confident public speaker, going unscripted like he did, then he has whenever he's been without the TOTUS over the last 4 years. Maybe some of his debate preperation actually involved going to some public speaking classes.

djones520 wrote:
He is a good orator with a teleprompter in front of him.

I will give him credit though, he sounded like a much more confident public speaker, going unscripted like he did, then he has whenever he's been without the TOTUS over the last 4 years. Maybe some of his debate preperation actually involved going to some public speaking classes.

That's largely because he is a confident public speaker. He's an incredibly smart guy, as is Romney.

Obama was just totally unprepared.

 Seaward wrote:

djones520 wrote:
He is a good orator with a teleprompter in front of him.

I will give him credit though, he sounded like a much more confident public speaker, going unscripted like he did, then he has whenever he's been without the TOTUS over the last 4 years. Maybe some of his debate preperation actually involved going to some public speaking classes.

That's largely because he is a confident public speaker. He's an incredibly smart guy, as is Romney.

I am a confident public speaker. He is not. Were he in the same tech school class I was he'd have a permanent marker dent in his forhead from my instructor throwing them at him everytime he said "umm".

I'll never understand the myth about his great oratory abilities.

djones520 wrote:

I am a confident public speaker. He is not. Were he in the same tech school class I was he'd have a permanent marker dent in his forhead from my instructor throwing them at him everytime he said "umm".

I'll never understand the myth about his great oratory abilities.

When's the last time you gave a speech to hundreds of thousands of people, out of curiosity?

Suggesting that any modern president is not a confident public speaker is pretty hilarious, honestly.

What you're trying to say is that he's not a good public speaker, but even that is wrong. There aren't a lot of people that are better with prepared material.

Without prepared material, he uses a lot of fillers, such as "umm." Know why? You say "umm" when you're thinking. If you make it through a debate without uttering that phrase, or another similar filler - such as a pause - then congratulations, you didn't think about a single thing you were saying.

djones520 wrote:

He is a good orator with a teleprompter in front of him.

One interesting thing I have noticed with the whole "teleprompter in chief" thing.

If you look at most of the pictures and video footage of Romney speaking at events, you hardly ever see a teleprompter in the shot. It seems like the Republicans are making a very big effort not to have Romney be seen with a teleprompter at all when he speaks. But if you find non-standard angle photographs you can see that the teleprompters are still there and he uses them just as much as Obama does.



Making a big deal out of the "TOTUS" while ignoring the fact that every politician, including Romney, uses them is kind of old.

The gain Romney's gotten from that debate has been pretty significant, but polls released in the last couple of days have seen those gains receding already. It's a weird election this time around.

 Jihadin wrote:
Obama was just totally unprepared.

I think he prepared to target Romney on specific policies - the $5 trillion tax cut specifically, and to make Romney either accept the terms Obama was putting onto his policies, or make Romney back away from those policies entirely. Obama failed really badly to achieve either goal, and Romney just sidestepped the issue with more vaguenss and Obama just kept saying '$5 trillion'. He should have challenged to Romney to properly flesh out his policy.

I don't really see it. I didn't think he was that good, but I hate the man with a burning passion, so...

Like I said. Unprepared. He wasn't mentally prepared at all

Edit
As I was when my wife saw all the new Chaos goodies that just came out. How much she threw down to build a Chaos Army. Her DE is shelved and now I have to paint her new Chaos Army. She saw the ugrade packs for Night Lords too. My Tau is not prepared to deal with this threat in the house...

 d-usa wrote:
One interesting thing I have noticed with the whole "teleprompter in chief" thing.

I've always seen that as a hilariously stupid line of attack. With all the legitimate things you could attack Obama for, you're seriously going to make a big issue out of him using a device that was also used by every single president since Lyndon Johnson? It's just the most vacuous argument imaginable; like arguing he's a poor writer because he uses a laptop.

 Ouze wrote:
I've always seen that as a hilariously stupid line of attack. With all the legitimate things you could attack Obama for, you're seriously going to make a big issue out of him using a device that was also used by every single president since Lyndon Johnson? It's just the most vacuous argument imaginable; like arguing he's a poor writer because he uses a laptop.

There was originally more of a substance to the attacks - heavy intimations that he was only good when he reading something someone else wrote. Basically that he was a puppet for some mysterious something. It was stupid (and had some pretty racist undertones) but it wasn't devoid of content.

As Obama became President and spoke off the cuff more, and as it became clear he wrote a lot more of his speaches than his contemporaries, that idea disappeared.

But, weirdly, the teleprompter chant didn't go away. It doesn't mean anything, it's just something people shout to diminish speaches by Obama that most people recognise were pretty good.

 d-usa wrote:

djones520 wrote:

He is a good orator with a teleprompter in front of him.

One interesting thing I have noticed with the whole "teleprompter in chief" thing.

If you look at most of the pictures and video footage of Romney speaking at events, you hardly ever see a teleprompter in the shot. It seems like the Republicans are making a very big effort not to have Romney be seen with a teleprompter at all when he speaks. But if you find non-standard angle photographs you can see that the teleprompters are still there and he uses them just as much as Obama does.



Making a big deal out of the "TOTUS" while ignoring the fact that every politician, including Romney, uses them is kind of old.

I don't think anyone's under the illusion that Romney or any other national politician uses a teleprompter. TOTUS has to do with how awesome and inspiring Barry is with a teleprompter, and how much foot he chews on when he doesn't use it. It's not a statement by Republicans that teleprompters are not being used by their candidates and frontmen.

 AustonT wrote:
I don't think anyone's under the illusion that Romney or any other national politician uses a teleprompter. TOTUS has to do with how awesome and inspiring Barry is with a teleprompter, and how much foot he chews on when he doesn't use it. It's not a statement by Republicans that teleprompters are not being used by their candidates and frontmen.

But it isn't 'teleprompter' that makes that true. It's that he's quite good when he's got a chance to compose his thoughts, and prepare a 5 or 10 minute speach, but not so good at coming up with the right words on the spot. And everyone knows that.

The teleprompter thing came out of an effort to try and make people believe that Obama was just saying things other people wrote for him.

 AustonT wrote:
I don't think anyone's under the illusion that Romney or any other national politician uses a teleprompter. TOTUS has to do with how awesome and inspiring Barry is with a teleprompter, and how much foot he chews on when he doesn't use it.

Like when he said, off the cuff, that 47% of the country were victims who don't care about their own lives and so he shouldn't worry about them?

So the popular vote has closed up. Still, this election is not decided by popular vote. It is all about the Electoral College.

The question is, has Romney's road to 270 gotten any easier? I don't really see where it has? Nate Silver says he has a25% chance, up from 21% chance to win the Electoral College thanks to his Debate performance. Nate is a Poll Aggregator, so therefore more trustworthy than any single poll.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

I think a lot of this "popular vote/ polls dead even" stuff is the Media trying to keep I a horse race. If you look at the Electoral College, things aren't as close.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:
The teleprompter thing came out of an effort to try and make people believe that Obama was just saying things other people wrote for him.

If I were the uncharitable sort, I would think it is because people don't want to believe that Obama is good at anything.

 Ouze wrote:


Like when he said, off the cuff, that 47% of the country were victims who don't care about their own lives and so he shouldn't worry about them?

Cept that's not what he said, sure.

Incumbents tend to do less well in debates because they're out of practice. When you can ignore anybody that doesn't agree with you for the better part of 4 years you tend not to be as on the ball.

Romney's spent the last year getting rocks thrown at him so he's much more in the game and used to adversarial settings. That really showed in terms of presidential presence and poise.

I don't think this is just media noise, either. Two weeks ago Obama had the thing 'in the bag' and was the clear frontrunner with the wind at his back. Now Romney is actually ahead on RealClearPolitics national polls and even more meaningfully the swing states where Obama's dominance more or less ensured a win are now much more contested.

Seems he closed the gap with women voters to. Actually looking forward to the townhall debate thats coming.

Going to be interesting to see what impact the VP debate will have, if any.

I kind of miss Palin now...

Biden's going to try to steer the conversation to foreign policy, which is his area of expertise. Ryan is going to try to keep it on the domestic economy, which is his.

The distinctly left-of-center female moderator is a more interesting swing point to me. As the first lady debate mod, if she's too obviously partisan she can really screw up the whole gender equality aspects of the format if she doesn't do well.

Yup... race is a tossup now...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html
First time Romney is ahead in this poll...

Doubt that the VP debate would budge the meter...