CBS snap poll - Early returns:
CBS Poll: More Uncommitted Voters Saw Biden As Winner
These are early numbers and subject to change, according to article. Submitted because I’m too nervous to go to bed.
GWB was never that vapid. Not even close. He’s no genius and he did the folksy bit, and he doesn’t speechify well, but even in his worst debate he had ten times more substance than Palin did.
This is why debates are so fun to discuss.
I agree that Biden was better than McCain or Obama, but I thought Palin was indescribably awful. It was the worst performance I have ever seen by a professional politician in my life, and that’s saying a lot because I’m Canadian and get to watch five idiots instead of two in our debates. She was hopelessly, absurdly out of her league. I wouldn’t vote for her for any office.
But, the folksy thing, while it disgusts and offends me, plays very well with some people. She may get some working class votes. It’s likely not enough at this stage, but it’ll be interesting to see what the instant polls say.
Biden played that perfectly. His responses focused entirely on McCain and Obama, and treated Palin like the non-entity she was, without doing anything remotely disrespectful to her. Obviously, she was not going to urinate on the stage or break into an Ethel Merman impersonation, so it made more sense to leave her out of the equation altogether.
If these things were scored on the basis of who made more coherent points and showed a command of the issues, there’s no question that Biden performed extremely better than Palin did. Palin explicitly said that she was going to evade questions and proceded to do so, along with repeatedly lying and regurgitating talking points.
These things are generally scored on different metrics, however, so it may well be seen as a tie since neither person committed any major gaffes. From the perspective of the Obama campaign, that’s perfectly fine. Nothing that happened here will remotely impact the free fall of the McCain campaign, and probably won’t even change the impact of all the interview material that’s been shown from Palin’s awful interview performances.
I thought the most interesting line from that poll:
I didn’t think you could get 98 percent of people to agree on anything.
Never mind…I got scooped. That always happens when I go looking for cites before I post…
Folks saying that she was too folksy, I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Granted, a lot of people aren’t looking for folksy in their elected officials, but at least some are. And in any sort of competition, you have to play to your strengths. Folksiness is clearly Palin’s major strength, so that’s what she went with. It would have gone a lot more poorly for her if she were trying to stick to a style that she wasn’t as good with.
Yeah, but WINKING? Are we sure that wasn’t Tina Fey up there doing a Palin impersonation?
CNN also just put up a its own poll (not the CBS poll) showing Biden winning by double digits among independents.
Fox News ran a weird bit right after the debate where this tubby guy in a blazer took a straw poll of “uncommited voters split evenly between Bush and Kerry in '04” sitting in a room somewhere in St. Louis.
He asked by show of hands who thought Palin won. Virtually everyone raised their hands. He asked who was the better candidate. Everyone raised their hands for Palin.
Then he took comments from the audience, which is when I realized the whole thing was scripted. I’m not kidding. Every single person had a carefully prepared five second soundbite, including just the right amount of people who “still weren’t sure”, but said something about how she’d convinced them she was qualified.
I wish I were joking, or that the people weren’t really paid actors but were actually a random selection who all happened to think Palin won, but… :rolleyes:
That tubby guy was Frank Lutz, father of the phrase “death tax.” I don’t think it was rigged. His other focus groups have all favored Obama.
After reading the transcript a couple of times, I have come to the conclusion that this debate was really boring on the whole.
Which is why Palin clearly won the debate. There were a number of reasons:
1-Palin is much more attractive than Joe Biden, even accounting for the age difference.
2-Palin has a dazzling smile and she smiles at the american people most of the time. Smiles help people feel good so she scores points.
3- Palin uses really cute folksy expressions like doggone it and pronounces nuclear the same way Jack Bauer and the common american folks do.
4- She is a brunette and she wears glasses. Brunettes who wear glasses are smart and effective. How else would she have become governor.
5- Biden is just some boring old fart from the senate. Zzzzzzz…
Some of these may seem trivial or overstated but you are probably not the constituency targeted by either party.
The base of either wasn’t going to change in this. I’m pretty sure the republican base is simply pleased that she didn’t soil herself. When expectations are that low anything looks good. But she dodged questions and praised Cheney (let’s see how that plays with independents).
Dopers, your secret is out for all the world to see:
Are you sure we’re talking about the same segment? The guy was young- early 30s, at most. Red hair.
If that really was a random sample, I’m absolutely gobsmacked. It couldn’t gone more smoothly (given the perceived bent of Fox News) if you did it with the cast of a daytime soap.
Who are they going to have as Joe Biden?
Not the ones that Joe Klein has described observing over at Swampland.
You must be kidding. I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick.
<shudder>
Heh heh. I liked it when she talked about getting tapped by McCain.
Yeah, I bet he tapped it.
Except she pronounced it “blenders” – yes, she did. The guy sitting next to me at the debate watching party caught that too.
My reactions: She did what she had to do, which was avoid Couricizing her responses. But that Miss Congeniality shtick set my teeth on edge. Smiled too much, and had too much of the gosh golly perky cheerleader in her voice too often. And what’s with the winking – was she trying to flirt her way into our hearts? To me, the gestalt was a blizzard of talking points.
I thought Joe came across as passionate, genuine, knowledgeable, and with far more of the gravitas* appropriate to a vice president and potential president. When he spoke about his first wife’s death and raising his two sons as a single dad, well, that brief, quiet struggle to regain control really got to me.
I am, of course, an Obama*Biden partisan, so take that for what it’s worth.
*Truth to tell, I’m sick of this word, but it does neatly encapsulate a number of the character traits I look for in a candidate.
You may wish to visit the Who’s hotter- Palin or Biden? thread over in The Pit.