Take this post with a grain of salt. Why? Because I am discussing a single poll, and we don’t want to go overboard in drawing conclusions from one data point. Credit goes to Kos for examining the internals of the post-debate Ipsos/Reuters poll, where he discovered something very interesting about how each candidate managed to improve their favorability numbers last night.
Mitt Romney went from 46-51 unfavorable before the debate to 51-49 favorable after the debate. But he gained exactly nothing from independents and almost nothing from Democrats. His favorable numbers went up because Republicans loved his aggressive approach.
Obama’s overall favorable numbers remained unchanged at 56-44. His numbers with Democrats also remained unchanged at 90-10. But he flipped a 46-54 deficit with independents to a 54-46 positive rating. The post-debate sample included fewer Democrats than the pre-debate sample, which helps explain why Obama’s overall rating remained constant even as he did so well with independents.
Again, this is a single poll. But if these numbers hold up in other polls, it tells us that Obama actually won the debate with people in the middle who are what we call persuadable voters. It could be that people recognized that Romney was more aggressive and therefore assume he won the debate, but they weren’t personally impressed. Republicans loved the debate because Romney got to use a bunch of their crazy talking points without the usual contradiction. It made them feel good to watch someone get away with that for a change and also to see someone be rude, arrogant and condescending to the president they love to hate. There’s a real benefit to this for Romney. He energized his own troops. He gave them hope. He gave them a reason to keep working. He pulled a lot of people out of their apathetic stupor. Riling up the troops is important and will deliver votes to Romney. But it comes at a cost, too.
Remember, in the famous 47% speech, Romney explained why he wasn’t being more combative and condescending to the president.
“We speak with voters across the country about their perceptions. Those people I told you, the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring onto our side, they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago. So, and by the way, when you say to them, “Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?” they overwhelmingly say no. They like him. But when you say, “Are you disappointed in his policies that haven’t worked?” they say yes. And because they voted for him, they don’t want to be told that they were wrong, that he’s a bad guy, that he did bad things, that he’s corrupt. Those people that we that have to get, they want to think they did the right thing but he just wasn’t up to the task. They love the phrase, “He’s in over his head.”
But we, you see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans. We spend our days with people who agree with us, and these people are people who voted for him and don’t agree with us. And so the things that animate us are not the things that animate them. And the best success I have speaking with those people is, you know, the president’s been a disappointment.”
Romney thought he should attack the president more with sorrow than with contempt, because he recognized that most of the people he needs to win over are people who voted for the president and still want to believe in him. They don’t like to see him disrespected. These Ipsos/Reuters poll numbers basically confirm Mitt’s insight about that. He did really well with the people who are animated by Fox News and right-wing fantasies, but that came at the expense of the persuadable voters. It’s not surprising. This is the kind of data that I expected to see while I was watching the debate unfold. I also expected a gender gap, but I haven’t seen the data on that.
So, again with the caveat that this is just one poll, I don’t think Obama did as badly last night as many people assume. And every women I talked to or overheard today had something negative to say about Romney’s performance. Key words were: rude, bully, condescending, disrespectful, and overbearing.
The comment about Big Bird is going to have a lasting impact, too. And the fact-checkers will be putting their articles into every nook and cranny of the media universe (that is not completely controlled by the right wing). A debate is not won or lost the night it occurs. It is won in the days that come immediately after.
