Presidential Debate Instant Polls Show Narrow Win For Obama

WASHINGTON — After a poor performance in the first presidential debate two weeks ago, President Barack Obama came back strong in the second one, winning perceived victories over Mitt Romney in two instant-reaction polls — one of debate-watching registered voters, the other of debate-watchers who went into the debate uncommitted to either candidate.

A CNN survey of registered voters who watched the debate found that 46 percent said Obama won the debate and 39 percent said Romney did. The survey’s margin of error was four percentage points.

After a weak performance in the first debate, Obama outperformed expectations in the second: Seventy-three percent of respondents said Obama did better than they expected, 10 percent said he did worse, and 16 percent said he did about the same as expected. Romney, who had a much stronger performance than Obama did in the first debate, performed closer to expectations: 37 percent said he did better than expected, 28 percent said worse, and 33 percent said he performed the same.

Romney performed better on convincing respondents that he has a clear plan for solving the country’s problems: 49 percent said Romney did and 50 percent said he did not. Only 38 percent said Obama did, and 61 percent said he did not.

Respondents favored Romney on a variety of issues, including the economy (58 percent to 40 percent over Obama), taxes (51 percent to 44 percent) and the budget deficit (59 percent to 36 percent). Romney held a narrower advantage on health care, 49 percent to 46 percent. On foreign policy, 49 percent said Obama would handle it better and 47 percent said Romney would.

Obama and Romney split the advantage on more intangible measures. Romney took a slight (49 percent to 46 percent) advantage on being a stronger leader, while Obama scored points for being more likable (47 percent to 41 percent) and caring more about the audience (44 percent to 40 percent). Forty-five percent of respondents said Romney answered questions more directly and 43 percent said Obama did, while 49 percent said Obama spent more time attacking his opponent and 35 percent said Romney did.

The debate was unlikely to change many minds among CNN’s respondents: 25 percent said they were more likely to vote for Obama after the debate and 25 percent said the same about Romney. But 48 percent said they weren’t more likely to vote for either one. Debate watchers generally are more likely to be paying close attention to the campaign and more likely to already be committed to a candidate than the general population.

According to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the sample was composed of about 33 percent Democrats and 33 percent Republicans, or about 8 percentage points more Republican than the average of all CNN polls in 2012 among all adults (not registered voters specifically). CNN surveyed 457 registered voters who had participated in a poll earlier this week, said they watched the debate, and had agreed to be re-interviewed for the post-debate poll. The margin of error of the poll is 4.5 percentage points.

A CBS News poll conducted using an online panel of uncommitted voters found a 37 percent plurality said Obama won the debate, while 30 percent said Romney did and 33 percent said it was a tie.

Romney came into the debate with a big advantage on the handling the economy among the CBS respondents, and Obama was able to close that gap slightly. Before the debate, 71 percent of respondents said Romney had the edge on handling the economy and 27 percent said Obama did. After the debate, that narrowed somewhat to a 65 percent to 34 percent advantage for Romney.

Obama held the advantage on better handling the middle class, 56 percent to 43 percent. Fifty-five percent of poll respondents said Obama gave direct answers to questions, while 49 percent said the same about Romney.

The CBS News post-debate polls are conducted using the GfK KnowledgePanel, a representative Internet panel. CBS surveyed 525 uncommitted voters who watched the debate, for a four percentage point margin of error. The CBS defines uncommitted voters as those who are totally undecided before the debate or who were leaning to a candidate, but said they may still change their minds. The survey sample was composed of 56 percent who described themselves as independents, 23 percent Democrats and 21 percent Republicans.

Microsoft Xbox, working in partnership with the the polling company YouGov, conducted a live poll among more than 30,000 respondents who tuned in to watch the debate and answered survey questions via Xbox Live’s election channel.

The Xbox sample was neither randomly selected nor scientifically projective of any larger population, and the adult participants skewed heavily younger and male.

However, the sheer size of the participant pool allowed the Xbox/YouGov pollsters to isolate 988 respondents who said they were completely undecided before the debate, and they judged Obama the winner by a 51 percent to 17 percent margin. After the debate, most remained undecided, but 28 percent said they now will vote or lean to Obama, while just 10 percent said they will vote for Romney.

Surveys from CBS and CNN, plus a Democracy Corps/Women’s Voices Women Vote focus group, found that the first debate was a resounding victory for Romney among uncommitted voters as well as debate-watchers more generally. Since that debate, national polling has trended broadly toward Romney, and the current HuffPost Pollster estimate shows the two candidates essentially tied, with Romney at 47.1 percent and Obama at 46.9 percent.

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Bits Blog: What the Presidential Candidates Say About Tech

New York Tech MeetUp, a nonprofit group that represents computer coders and other technology industry people in New York, asked the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to pitch how their policies “would benefit the growth of New York start-up community and other start-up entrepreneurs.”

Each campaign responded.

Mitt Romney promised, among other things, to raise visa caps for “highly skilled foreign workers,” lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent and weaken the power of regulatory agencies. He offered a vague paean to technology entrepreneurs, too, some of whom have generously donated to his campaign. “As president, I will emphasize policies that once again make America the best place in the world to make a discovery, start a business, hire a worker or find a job,” he wrote.

Barack Obama, once crowned “the tech president,” sought to cast himself as the candidate who understands “innovation” and praised technology professionals. “And the reason I’ve never been more optimistic about the future is because of all of you,” he wrote. “You’ll be the next entrepreneur to turn a big idea into something — a new invention or an entire new
industry.”

He told the group that he had invested in broadband connectivity, signed a law making it easier for start-ups to go public, established a “start-up visa program” to allow foreigners to set up businesses in this country and created a new White House job — chief technology officer.

Media Decoder Blog: Presidential Debate Drew More Than 70 Million Viewers

The first of three presidential debates between President Obama and Mitt Romney reached more than 70 million viewers on Wednesday night.

Nielsen, a television measurement company, said 67.2 million viewers watched on television at home — the highest number for a first debate since 1980. That year, 80.6 million watched the only debate between President Jimmy Carter and the Republican presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan.

A few second- and third-round presidential debates since then have attracted more than 67 million viewers, including the second debate of the 1992 cycle. Nonetheless, Wednesday’s totals were surprisingly high by almost any standard.

About 52.4 million viewers tuned into the first debate in 2008, according to Nielsen, though that debate was held on a Friday night, typically a lower-rated night of the week. About 62.5 million viewers tuned into the first debate in 2004, which similarly featured an incumbent president and a challenger.

Nielsen’s total for Wednesday’s debate did not count people who watched outside the home (in offices, bars or airports) or who watched in other countries. Nor did not count any of the millions of people who had access to the debate on computers, tablets or phones. CNN.com, for instance, said it recorded 1.2 million live streams of its debate coverage around the world. YouTube, the Web video giant, said its partners had “millions of live-streamed views of the debates,” but declined to release specific numbers.

Of the 11 traditional channels that televised the debate and subscribed to Nielsen ratings, ABC was the most-watched, with almost 11.3 million viewers during the commercial-free debate, Nielsen said. NBC and CBS were close behind, with 11.1 million for NBC and 10.6 million for CBS.

Fox News Channel was as big as any broadcaster, with about 10.4 million viewers during the debate (up from 8.2 million in 2008 and 9.6 million in 2004). The Fox broadcast network attracted about 6.9 million; CNN, 6 million; and MSNBC, 4.7 million. (Fox News, MSNBC and CNN all skew toward older viewers, but interestingly, CNN had a surge of 18- to 34-year-old viewers for the debate — nearly 1.5 million, versus 882,000 for Fox News and 772,000 for MSNBC.)

More than 2.6 million Spanish-language viewers watched on Univision, and another 248,000 watched on Telemundo, according to Nielsen. (Telemundo showed the debate on a tape delay.) The lowest-rated of all the channels with the face-off was Current TV, Al Gore’s fledgling liberal cable channel, which had about 100,000 viewers.

Another measurement company, Rentrak, found that the total audience for the debate was remarkably stable from 9 to 10:30 p.m. The company, which tracks viewership behavior in one million homes, found a slight uptick at 10 p.m.

TiVo, which tracks the rewinding behavior of digital video recorder owners, found that the most-rewound moment of the debate came at 9:27, when Mr. Romney mentioned his plan to cut funding from PBS (and gave Big Bird a shout-out). About 250,000 viewers watched the debate on PBS.

Leaked Footage - Colorado County Clerk Registering Only Romney Voters

Leaked Footage ! This woman seen in this video works for the Colorado County Clerk's office. She gets caught registering votes for Mitt Romney only, all the Obama votes were thrown out. Damn, people want Obama out of office so bad that they are willing to cheat to get Romney in, just like they did for Bush, smh at America.

This is how the 2012 election will turn out this year. People are willing to cheat to get Romney into office just so he can continue to fuck up America even more.