After Mitt Romney stomped Barack Obama last Wednesday in the first presidential debate, the first slate of polls has been released, showing the challenger and the President virtually even in the November race.
Specifically, Obama’s abominable debate performance swept away a 5-point lead in Gallup’s polling, placing the contention in a dead heat race with a 47 percent split between Romney and the President. Pre-debate, Gallup shows Obama up 50-45, while post-debate, the two candidates stand at 47-47:
An Oct. 4-5 Gallup poll finds roughly two in three Americans reporting that they watched the Oct. 3 debate, similar to what Gallup measured for each of the three 2008 presidential debates. Those who viewed the debate overwhelmingly believe Romney did a better job than Obama, 72% to 20%. Republicans were nearly unanimous in judging Romney the winner.But even Democrats rated Romney as doing a better job than Obama, 49% to 39%.
These assessments are based on interviewing conducted Thursday and Friday after the Wednesday night debate, and may reflect the impact of news stories and media commentary — which mostly declared Romney as the debate winner — as well as personal reactions to the debates as they unfolded.
Gallup also assessed who fared better on their debate performance, and found that Romney’s 52-point victory is the largest the polling firm has ever analyzed. The prior widest margin gap measured was 42 percentage points for Bill Clinton over George H.W. Bush in 1992.
This is an interesting development, despite my distaste for the obnoxious onslaught of propaganda polls put forth by liberal survey groups. Refusing to target strictly likely voters is an act of futility when determining the potential presidential winner in an election that is going to have a sharp plunge in voter turnout for a particular candidate. Like, say, the array of blacks, Hispanics, and 21-year-old goons who are going to bypass the voting booth in November because Obama mania has become, like, so 2008.
