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Originally Posted by BroncoInferno
One of the areas where I think this may hurt Obama is his likeability. Even when he hasn't polled well in other areas, his likeability ratings have always been consistently strong. As shallow as it may sound, that is a big advantage with wishy-washy independents when they go into the booth. A lot of people will end up pulling the lever for the guy they like the best, the guy they would wanna have a beer with. Last night, he came of as aloof and condescending, and it could turn off some of those people.
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But do you think that the first debate is going to have that much of an impact? A lot of people's perceptions about the debate going into it are the same that they came away with. People heard what they really wanted to hear. I had a colleague of mine who did liaison work with me in the state legislature who went to the extremes to say that Obama's performance last night was the worst in all history (without having witnessed more than several debates in his lifetime). Can't agree with that, but he came off as disinterested and fumbled over quite a few things. I've never seen him struggle that much. It was kind of hard to watch.
I'm not sure how the other channels had their coverage, but I watched the CNN live coverage (streaming via the net) and it seemed like women responded better for Obama and men overwhelmingly supported Romney over him. That really comes as no surprise. It will be interesting to see how this impacts polls through this weekend. Prior to this debate, Obama had had his highest ratings among women, men and even higher percentages of Latino voters in his corner in his time as President.
Will be interesting to see if that changes. Last night was a bright spot for the Romney campaign and I expect a little bit of move in the polls for him after a pretty sound performance, but the electoral college deficit he has to make up is going to be really difficult.
I've also read that there has been a huge turnout in early voting for Democrats in a lot of battleground states that allow it. That is pretty good news for the Obama campaign.