ELECTIONATE OCTOBER 17, 2012
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After a decisive victory in the first presidential debate, Romney made big gains and inaugurated a new and close contest. But despite the clarity of Romney’s improvement, the exact source ofchange was never especially clear. Did Romney wipe away his extremist image and assuage the concerns of moderate voters disaffected with the state of the economy? Did the debate exacerbate the disappointment of the archetypical disappointed Obama voter that appeared to return to the president’s side amid a surge in economic confidence after the DNC? Did a decline in Democratic enthusiasm keep Obama’s supporters away from the polls and out of the likely voter models? Or was it some permutation of these credible options?
Whatever the verdict of tonight’s debate, there’s no question that the president’s performance was far stronger than the listless performance that first endangered his chances. The instapolls suggest that Obama edged Romney by a modest margin, not a landslide like the one that allowed Romney to improve by a net-4 or 5 points in the national polls (I admittedly didn't think the last debate would move the polls very much, but there's not much question that this debate seems less likely than the first debate to do so). But whether Obama improves in the polls depends, at least to some extent, on the source of Romney's gains following the first debate.
It's not hard to imagine a number of ways in which the debate could have helped the president. To the extent that Obama’s numbers faltered due to declining Democratic enthusiasm or response rates, one might expect the president’s energetic performance to rejuvenate Democratic enthusiasm. Similarly, if the perception that Romney was very moderate aided his post-debate surge, then Obama was probably aided by questions on social issues from a moderate crowd of well educated, socially moderate, New York suburbanites who helped push the debate toward a few social issues where Obama stands on relatively firm ground. Obama’s numbers might also improve if latent Obama supporters were simply disappointed by the president’s performance and less willing to offer their support to the president after a surprising defeat.
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But if Romney’s gains were a product of a genuine shift in perceptions of Romney’s character, as suggested by several polls showing Romney with improved favorability ratings after the first debate, then Obama might not make many gains at all. If someone thought Romney was a good enough guy after the last debate, they probably still feel that way. Romney appeared capable of handling the presidency and an undecided voter who was previously open to supporting him would probably still be open to him tomorrow morning. Indeed, the CNN poll showed that an equal share of voters said they were more likely to support Romney and Obama after tonight's debate.
As a result, it wouldn't be wise to expect a big shift in the polls. After all, Romney's September standing was deflated after months of attacks, the DNC and the 47 percent comments and Romney surged to just over 47 percent of the vote--just about the share of voters who disapprove of the president's performance. Realistically, Romney won't lose many of these voters from this point out and he would probably win them back by the election if he did. And Obama isn't likely to return to his post-DNC standing of 49 or 49.5 percent of the popular vote, which probably reflected an unsustainably poor image of Romney and post-DNC momentum (unless Obama's losses were almost entirely due to Democratic enthusiasm or response rates). With Obama likely to fall in a narrow band between his post-debate 47 percent and his pre-debate 49 percent, any gains would be slight and potentially difficult to distinguish from static. Of course, if Obama could get his number back near 49 percent, that would still be significant and potentially difficult for Romney to overcome.
5 comments
The Debate Probably Won't Move The Polls Much. Um, didn't you (and a lot of others) say the same thing last time?
- timteeter
October 17, 2012 at 12:49am
I don't think it will move the polls much. I just don't think that means much. This race was always going to be close. The thing that made it seem not so close through July and August was that Romney was so BAD that he kept his numbers artificially down. He erased that problem in the first debate. Obama helped a little there, mainly because of all the media noise his lackluster debate performance generated afterward, but the truth is that as long as Romney came out at looked reasonably intelligent and presidential, he was bound to convince a chunk of the anybody-but-Obama voters who still hadn't made up their minds about Mitt, bound to it no matter what the president did or how well he performed.
- AaronW
October 17, 2012 at 9:06am
"And Obama isn't unlikely to return to his post-DNC standing of 49 or 49.5 percent of the popular vote, which probably reflected an unsustainably poor image of Romney and post-DNC momentum." I'm not understanding this; "isn't likely to"? "is unlikely to"? or do you think it is probable that he will return to those levels?
- rmutt
October 17, 2012 at 10:15am
We won't know how much the polls are moved by this debate until early next week, and it's possible (though unclear, and contradicted by some polls) that there was some movement back toward Obama among voters during the past week. And let's remember that there is another debate in just six days' time, limited to foreign policy and maybe foreign trade. Based on his fumbles last night on Libya and his artificially forced row on Chinese investment, Romney may be in for a long night in that last debate against an emboldened Obama. I doubt that this will get Obama back over 50% or 51% in head-to-head polls with Romney, the way he was doing when Romney was at his nadir in mid-September. But it could well get Obama back to the solid though slim lead that he had over Romney all summer and the more-than-solid electoral college lead that he enjoyed at that time. One item that strikes me is that we are now done with debating domestic political issues, including abortion and other social issues, Medicare and Medicaid, tax cuts and deficits. It's possible that some economic matters will wend their way into the next debate -- presumably foreign trade and Chinese currency manipulation, off-shore investment and tax avoidance, maybe immigration as it impacts relations with Latin America and South Asia -- but we are essentially done with a lot of the most divisive stuff that impacts large chunks of voters. My sense is that part of Romney's surge has been his successful reclamation of older, Republican-leaning voters in Florida and elsewhere who had embraced the notion that Obamacare was a threat to Medicare but who were alarmed at Romney/Ryan's voucher plans after the attacks at the DNC and started to waiver. Romney's attacks on the $716 billion in Medicare "cuts" in the ACA at the first debate, and Obama's failure to effectively rebut them, really helped get this group back in the Republican column. The fact that health care was a non-factor in the second debate probably means that there is little that Democrats can do to raise fresh doubts among these voters about what Romney and Ryan would do to Medicare. So it seems that Romney's has successfully buttressed one of the GOP's electoral pillars and should be able to rely on a substantive majority of elderly voters on Election Day. On the other hand, I get the feeling that we haven't heard the last about China, off-shoring and exports and that Obama is going to push that stuff hard in the next debate. I think that Romney defended himself fairly well on these issues in the second debate, but he fumbled his response to Obama's bringing up the Sensata issue (the Democrats' answer to Solyndra, I guess) by trying to play gotcha with Obama's investments. Obama had an easy answer to that one -- I'm busy leading the nation so I don't have time to focus on my investment portfolio, which is a lot smaller than your ill-gotten lucre in any case. That stuff won't drive Florida, Virginia or Colorado, but it will definitely drive Ohio and other Midwestern states like Wisconsin and Iowa where the contest is close. Romney better come up with better lines about why his record at Bain should not make voters dubious about his desire to fix what ails the American worker by leveling the global playing field.
- wildboy
October 17, 2012 at 10:32am
"Isn't likely"; that's what I thought.... But thanks for the correction; glad to see I wasn't misreading an intentional litotes or something.
- rmutt
October 17, 2012 at 10:24pm