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Go Home The Silver Lining for Obama

PLANK OCTOBER 4, 2012

The Silver Lining for Obama

BY AMY SULLIVAN

Professional Democrats didn’t have a whole lot to work with on Wednesday night. On a call with pollster Stan Greenberg after the first presidential debate, I lost track of the number of times he emphasized that the focus group whose responses he was reporting leaned heavily Republican. I’m not sure how the veteran pollster ended up with such an unrepresentative mix, but that was just kind of the way things went for Democrats last evening.

Greenberg’s group of 45 undecided voters from the Denver suburbs gathered to watch the debates and answer questions about the two candidates. Two-thirds of them were women, including 12 unmarried women, and all were self-proclaimed independents, although like most “independents,” they had identifiable party leanings. In this case, 42 percent of the participants leaned Republican while 20 percent leaned Democratic.

Before the debate began, Obama was doing well among voters who had supported him in 2008, as well as some former McCain voters (30 percent of the group said if they had to choose, they would vote for Obama). At the same time, Romney lagged badly among Republican-leaning participants. Only 27 percent of the group said they would vote for Romney, which meant that a sizable portion of those who backed McCain in 2008 were not impressed enough with Romney to cast a hypothetical if-you-made-me-choose vote for him.

Over the course of the debate, Romney won those voters to his side. When it was all over, 42 percent of the group declared Romney the winner, compared to 20 percent who thought Obama won, and 38 percent who said neither candidate won the debate. And Romney’s share of the hypothetical vote had increased from 27 percent to 44 percent. The Republican-leaners had come home. 

On each of the more specific questions, participants also sorted out according to their 2008 vote and other party leaning. Republicans who had not rated Romney highly before the debate began now saw him as best able to handle the economy and as a strong leader.

The one area in which Romney made no headway with voters was on his ability to understand the concerns of the middle-class. Voters preferred Obama going in on the question of “who is better for the middle-class” and their views did not change following the debate.

Nearly all of the movement on Wednesday night came from undecided—but Republican-leaning—voters deciding to back Romney. Whether that was because after listening to the two men for 90 minutes these voters decided that they really were more ideologically in tune with the GOP or because they didn’t like the way Obama called his wife “sweetie” or because they just thought the president looked like he desperately needed a long vacation, they aligned themselves with Romney.

“What Romney accomplished,” said one of Greenberg’s colleagues in Denver, “was consolidating those Republican leaners who were undecided going into this.” As for Obama, Greenberg concluded, “there was no erosion.”

“No erosion” is hardly a rallying cry. But while Obama didn’t pick up much support in this focus group (33 percent said they would vote for him afterward, compared to 31 percent at the beginning of the evening), he ended up right at his 2008 vote levels. And at the end of the day, if Obama gets the same amount of support as in 2008, distributed the same way across key states like Colorado, he wins. That may be the official spin, but it’s also simple arithmetic.

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13 comments

Without a deal-breaking gaffe, it would be a sad state of affairs if 1½ hours of carefully structured conversation can change the impact of two years of campaigning. Are voters really that shallow? The good news for Obama is that he has another chance to make an impression.

- Claris

October 4, 2012 at 7:02am

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It looked like the President had made a decision to appear Presidential. It looks like the President has a habit of underestimating the willingness of his Republican opposition to hit below the belt without having an appropriate response.

- Nusholtz

October 4, 2012 at 8:07am

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Same Obama. Unable to wrap his mind around the fact that the Republicans are his sworn enemies and will tell any lie, no matter how preposterous, to further their cause. His task next time is simple: Have his weapons fully loaded with the attacks on the Republicans and the various Romney/Ryan plans, with enough "detail" to make them sound truthy. Have simple, ready responses to the predictable Romney attacks. Sometimes it is a matter of saying, "That is flatly untrue. It has been reported in the press time and time again that this claim by Governor Romney is a fabrication. The Governor needs to level with the American people about his plans instead of hiding behind such falsehoods." This is not a debate. It is punch and counter-punch. Obama needs to have both ready and deliver them with energy. Game over.

- roidubouloi

October 4, 2012 at 8:07am

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How could "The Republican Leaners" come "home", if Romney presented himself as more Liberal than Obama? Ah, because they can hear the dog-whistles. So Romney through generalizations made Supply-Side Economics good again? Well, the devil's in the details. As Obama's summation pointed out, Romney's big on "Repeal", but has no details on "Replace". On Obamacare, on Dodd-Frank, on Taxes, Romney's all optimisim and flowers. But people are going to get hurt.

- AllanL5

October 4, 2012 at 8:49am

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"That is flatly untrue. It has been reported in the press time and time again that this claim by Governor Romney is a fabrication. The Governor needs to level with the American people about his plans instead of hiding behind such falsehoods." Oh Roid ... really? Because "stop lying about my record" worked so well for Dole? Everyone talks about Obama underestimating his opponents - possible, but doubtful - but is there also not a tendency to underestimate Obama's ruthlessness? I mean, we have seen in the pages of this august publication article after article wringing hands about Bain, and here we are, Romney's unfavourability in the toilet because of those ads ... or Andrew Sullivan declaring hysterically that "we didn't build that" would end up losing Obama the election - and all it did was turn the Republican Convention into a joke. Obama cannot win this by out-Romneying Romney, or by sounding shrill and whiney - and "This is a lie" is both whiney and shrill, even if it is Jiminy Cricket telling it to Pinnocchio. I am not pretending that Obama's performance was part of a masterplan - no one is that good in planning and Obama is probably not that good an actor - but I think it is possible to be overwrought on this. Mark my word, Romney's debate snippets will find their way into Obama's ads. Tomorrow.

- icarus-r

October 4, 2012 at 10:07am

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Well you may be right Icarus "stop lying about my record" didn't work for Dole but on the other hand, "Oh there you go again" worked for Reagan.

- stanmvp48

October 4, 2012 at 10:26am

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If this was the domestic policy debate, where were abortion, gun control, immigration, campaign finance, gay rights etc etc

- stanmvp48

October 4, 2012 at 10:39am

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I sure hope icarus-r is right. I think he is. I think AllanL5 is correct about the dog-whistles too, how many times did Romney mention food stamps? If that isn't dog whistling what is. And he has crocodile tears on top of the dog whistles. Yet we know how he feels about people on food stamps, people who aren't rich, etc. and also, people on Medicare. He repeated the lies about the 7 billion several times, even as he promised to dismantle Obamacare, which would throw people out of the medical system altogether, tens of millions of us who can go to the ER I suppose. And he lied about the 5 trillion also. I wish people would focus less on Obama and Lehrer, who were bullied, and more on Romney, who came off like the quintessential ugly upper class American and lied and dogwhistled all night long to boot. I thought it was an ugly performance and it made me very angry and terribly depressed - the whole thing was flat out painful; and I am more depressed that people are beating up on Obama for not stooping to that level rather than calling Romney out for being a liar and a bully.

- Sophia

October 4, 2012 at 11:42am

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And yes indeed where is the GOP platform in all this? Arizona has just passed a bill, signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer, stating that women are pregnant 2 weeks before conception.

- Sophia

October 4, 2012 at 11:43am

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You are missing the point, icarus. You have to fight the other guys rhetorical claims to a draw, else they stick: Trending: How Can Romney Possibly be Losing? October 04, 2012 Fact Checking Romney Jonathan Chait says Mitt Romney's two biggest pivots to the center in last night's debate were not true by his own campaign's admission. "Romney won the debate in no small part because he adopted a policy of simply lying about his policies. Probably the best way to understand Obama's listless performance is that he was prepared to debate the claims Romney has been making for the entire campaign, and Romney switched up and started making different and utterly bogus ones. Obama, perhaps, was not prepared for that, and he certainly didn't think quickly enough on his feet to adjust to it." Think Progress says Romney misled viewers 27 times last night. _____________________ Of course, you cannot principally play defense but have to stick it to the other guy repeatedly and make him defend. A little bit of "facts" adds truthiness. But more than a little and the electorate is quickly confused. "Stop lying about my record," is poor because it is too general. A specific claim that something is a falsehood, if not overused, is very effective. "There you go again."

- roidubouloi

October 4, 2012 at 12:30pm

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The follow up is: "We saved $716 billion in the Medicare program by eliminating overpayment to insurance companies and health care providers. Those are real savings, not cuts, as Governor Romney claims. In fact, Governor Romney's Medicare plan calls for the identical cost savings. But he proposes to use the savings into tax cuts for the wealthy. We put that money back into health care."

- roidubouloi

October 4, 2012 at 12:42pm

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If you "win" a competition, by cheating (lying), and it's discovered after the competition that's what you did, did you still "win"? I guess we're going to find out in the next week or so.

- AllanL5

October 4, 2012 at 1:18pm

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Everyone said Clinton won the Ohio debate, but the story morphed as people had time to reflect and process on what was said.

- GSpinks

October 4, 2012 at 5:40pm

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