Who Won The Obama-Romney Debate Last Night: A Closer Look At The Post-Debate Poll Shows It Wasn’t Even CLOSE.

Here’s an interesting article which has the virtue of laying out the most important facts in a very few words:

CNN Poll: Obama wins overall, Romney wins many issues
Oct 16, 2012
by Carla Marinucci

The major post debate polls are showing most debate watchers think President Obama was the winner — and a typical finding comes in the CNN post-debate poll of registered voters who actually watched the debate. They were 33 percent Democratic and 33 percent Republican — which means it’s weighted a bit to include about 8 percent more Republicans than the voting population as a whole.

Bottom line: by 46-39 percent, the CNN.com poll respondents called Obama the winner. But asked who did the debate make you more likely to vote for, the respondents were tied between Romney and Obama, 25-25 percent.

Still, Romney won in other key areas:
*On who would better handle the economy: 58 percent Romney; 40 percent Obama.
*On who would better handle health care: 49 percent Romney; 46 percent Obama
*On taxes: 51 percent Romney; 44 percent Obama
*On who is a stronger leader: 49 percent Romney; 46 percent Obama
*On who is more likeable: 47 percent Obama: 41 percent Romney
*On who cares more about your life: 44 percent Obama; 40 percent Romney
*On who answered more directly: 45 percent Romney; 43 percent Obama

Okay, first the sampling of Republicans versus Democrats that Marinucci mentions.  It is incredibly interesting to me that CNN is giving Democrats an eight-point advantage in their sampling formula.  Do you know what the balance between Democrat and Republican voting was in the historic Obama wave election of 2008?  It was +7 Democrat.  CNN says it’s going to be +8 this time.  It’s really amazing when you stop and think about it: CNN and the other polling organizations that have such an oversampling formula for Democrats are literally predicting that this election will be even BIGGER for Obama than it was in 2008 when he was the messiah and everybody was blaming Bush and nobody could blame Obama because he promised hope and change.  Is that what you think?  Seriously?  Do you believe that the masses are even crazier for Obama now than they were four years ago?  I sure as hell don’t.

Okay, so the CNN poll shows that by a seven-point margin that Romney blew the doors off in the last debate, “Obama won the debate.”  You might remember that first debate – when Romney destroyed Obama by 50 damn points.

Well, here’s the question, when it’s time to vote, do you believe that voters will ask:

Who won that second debate?  The poll says maybe Obama did.  And the first debate that Romney won by fifty points is meaningless but that second debate was huge.  I’ll vote for Obama…

Or do you think they will ask:

Who will do a better job handling the economy?

If it is the second thing, like every sentient being (sorry Democrats, I know that rules you out) thinks it is, Mitt Romney won last night’s debate HUGE.  Who would better handle the economy?  After watching the debate, people by an 18-point margin chose Romney over Obama.

[Update, 10/17/12: Oh, my.  It’s even worse than I thought it was for Obama.  I found out that the CBS post-debate poll was even WORSE in proving that Obama has no answer for the economy and people overwhelmingly know he doesn’t.  Check this CBS article points out: the American people think that Mitt Romney will do a better job handling the economy than Obama by a 31-point margin (65% to 34%).

The Gallup poll among likely voters out today has Mitt Romney up by six points nationally.  I can’t imagine that Obama even slowed Romney’s momentum down last night.

Mitt Romney Crushes President Empty Chair In First Debate

Some wit had this to offer as the picture that summed up the night in last night’s debate:

That of course being a reference to Clint Eastwood’s takedown of Obama.

Personally, I think the chair may have actually fared better if it had done less talking and more shutting the hell up.  Obama – according to CNN – actually got nearly five minutes of talk-time than Romney had.  For all the good it did him.

A lot of people noticed the difference between Governor Romney and President Empty Chair.  Look at the CNN post debate poll:

CNN Poll: Most watchers say Romney debate winner
October 3rd, 2012
CNN Political Unit

Denver, Colorado (CNN) – Two-thirds of people who watched the first presidential debate think that Republican nominee Mitt Romney won the showdown, according to a nationwide poll conducted Wednesday night.

According to a CNN/ORC International survey conducted right after the debate, 67% of debate watchers questioned said that the Republican nominee won the faceoff, with one in four saying  that President Barack Obama was victorious. – Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker

“No presidential candidate has topped 60% in that question since it was first asked in 1984,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

While nearly half of debate watchers said the showdown didn’t make them more likely to vote for either candidate, 35% said the debate made them more likely to vote for Romney while only 18% said the faceoff made them more likely to vote to re-elect the president.

More than six in ten said that president did worse than expected, with one in five saying that Obama performed better than expected. Compare that to the 82% who said that Romney performed better than expected. Only one in ten felt that the former Massachusetts governor performed worse than expected.

“This poll does not and cannot reflect the views of all Americans. It only represents the views of people who watched the debate and by definition cannot be an indication of how the entire American public will react to Wednesday’s debate in the coming days,” cautions Holland.

The sample of debate-watchers in the poll was 37% Democratic and 33% Republican.

“That indicates that the sample of debate watchers is about four points more Democratic and about eight points more Republican than an average CNN poll of all Americans, for a small advantage for the Republicans in the sample of debate-watchers,” adds Holland.

The poll suggests that the debate didn’t change opinions of the president. Forty-nine percent of debate watchers said before the debate that they had a favorable opinion of Obama, and that number didn’t change following the debate.

It was pretty much a similar story for Romney, whose favorable rating among debate watchers edged up just two points, from 54% before the debate to 56% after the debate.

The economy dominated the first debate and according to the poll, and by a 55%-43% margin, debate watchers said that Romney rather than Obama would better handle the economy. On the issue of taxes, which kicked off the debate, Romney had a 53%-44% edge over Obama. And by a 52%-47% margin, debate watchers said Romney would better handle health care, and he had the edge on the budget deficit by a 57%-41% margin.

Debate watchers thought Romney was more aggressive. Fifty-three percent said Romney spent more time attacking his opponent. Only three in ten thought Obama spent more time taking it to Romney. By a 58%-37% margin, debate watchers thought Romney appeared to be the stronger leader.

“Romney’s only Achilles heel may be the perception that he spent more time attacking his opponent than Obama, which may explain why two-thirds of debate-watchers said that Romney did the best job but only 46% said that he was more likeable than Obama,” says Holland.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International, with 430 adult Americans who watched the debate questioned by telephone.  All interviews were conducted after the end of the debate. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser contributed to this story

CBS’s post-debate poll wasn’t a whole lot better for the failure-in-chief:

Mitt Romney scored a clear victory among uncommitted voters who watched the first presidential debate, saying by a two-to-one margin that the Republican nominee was the winner.

Among uncommitted voters, 46 percent said Romney won the debate, versus 22 percent who said the same of President Obama, according to an online poll of 523 uncommitted voters conducted after the debate by CBS News. That poll found 32 percent said the debate was a tie.

A CNN telephone survey of 430 registered voters who were questioned after watching the contest handed an even more decisive victory to Romney: 67 percent said he won the debate, compared to only 25 percent who said the same of Obama.

The CBS poll also showed Romney making clear strides in improving his likeability, with 56 percent of those surveyed saying their opinions of him had changed for the better. He saw a huge jump – 30 percent – in the number of uncommitted voters who said Romney cares about their needs and problems. Before the debate, 30 percent agreed with the statement. Afterward, that number rose to 63 percent. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed said the same of Obama, up from 53 percent before the debate.

The CNN poll actually found Romney leading on likeability among the poll respondents, with 46 percent saying Romney was more likeable and 45 percent choosing Obama. Fifty-eight percent also deemed Romney the stronger leader, compared to 37 percent for Obama.

Romney also far exceeded expectations, while the opposite was true of Obama. Among registered voters surveyed by CNN, 82 percent said the former Massachusetts governor exceeded their expectations, but 61 percent said the president did worse than expected.

The one silver lining for the Obama campaign may be that nearly half of respondents in the CNN poll – 47 percent – said that the debate didn’t make them more likely to vote for either candidate. But Romney also won on that measure, with 35 percent saying the matchup made them more likely to vote for him. Only 18 percent  said the same of the president.

Six in 10 respondents to the CBS News poll identify as independents, 22 percent say they are Democrats, and 18 percent identify as Republicans. The margin of error was four points for the CBS poll and 4.5 points for CNN.

Obama was rarely ever able to gin up the courage to look Romney in the eye.  And judging by the amount of time Obama spent looking down, I’m guessing that the people who write the script for his teleprompter took his wristwatch away so the camera couldn’t focus on him desperately looking at the seconds tick by in his asskicking.

Don’t listen to me, though.  Listen to Obama supporter and big Obama donor Bill Maher:

Slate isn’t merely reliably leftist, it is überüberleftist.  But here was their headline on the debate:

“Pundits Agree: Romney Wins Round One—and It Wasn’t Even Close“

The final paragraph of that piece was this:

And what seems to be, so far at least, the pretty unanimous view that Obama lost the debate may hurt him more than how he actually did at the podium. “Much worse for Obamas than the debate is the media’s harsh verdict on his debate performance,” writes the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein on Twitter.

If you survey the tweets and opinion pieces of liberals, you very quickly realize that if liberals were preying mantises (they’re actually a different kind of insect), they would have literally devoured Barack Obama.

In 2008, John McCain’s performance demonstrated that he did not deserve to be president.  Obama didn’t deserve to be president, either, mind you, but John McCain failed to make a case for himself far more than Obama did.

Last night, Mitt Romney clearly and decisively proved he deserves to be president.  And Barack Obama proved just as clearly and decisively that he does NOT deserve another term.