When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won't be there no more
Across the land, viewers were dazzled by the end result of Mitt Romney's months of debate preparation. They were shocked, they were awed, they awarded him the victory.
And when it had ended, almost all of them stuck with the same guy they supported in the first place.
Across the land — from an art museum in North Carolina to college campuses in California and Iowa, a retirement community in Florida and Becker's home along the Long Island Sound — debate-watch gatherings were filled with partisans whose minds were pretty much made up before the candidates opened their mouths. The debate itself didn't change their votes.
But the exchange did serve to reinforce their decisions.
You're seeing it over and over today, in accounts like
this from Missouri:
Adam Olson, an MU freshman who was leaning toward voting for Obama before the debate, said he watched the debate and learned more about Romney and his specific plans.
"I thought it was pretty good and useful," he said. “I think I’m still leaning toward Obama. I didn't like Romney’s education plan and how he’s going to fund it. I thought Obama's plan was much more suitable for the times right now.”
For Dorothy Kyger, a volunteer at the Columbia Area Senior Center, the debate definitely "reinforced her values."
"Romney wants to get rid of the (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), but he didn't really specifically say anything other than he would turn it over to the states for them to make their own policies," Kyger said.
Kyger added, however, that she thought Romney outperformed Obama vocally.
Focus Groups say Romney won, won't affect the overall vote.
Democratic public opinion firm GQR Digital held a debate focus group, which found that though Romney improved his personal appeal during the debate, "the research does not suggest that Romney fundamentally changed the political calculus in this election."
Nor were the
WalMart moms of Nevada particularly enamored of Romney:
A focus group of 30 Las Vegas area "Walmart moms"—which is, apparently, a demographic being tracked closely—there was a general sense that Romney had won (not a single hand went up for Obama), but perhaps at some cost.
The women used words like “rude,” “pushy” and “assertive”—in a bad way—to describe Romney's demeanor, according to an ABC News report. A National Journal report about the same group made it sound bad for Obama, with words like "defeated" and "backpedaling."
A thousand Wisconsin registered voters were polled by Marquette Law School. A whopping
two percent said the debates were very likely to change their current choice.
For all the incessant hyping of these debates, political science experts from California to Nebraska to Pennsylvania are generally agreed that they really don't seem to sway elections.
Nor will they sway this one.
"Nobody is going to switch sides on the basis of this debate," said Samuel Popkin, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego.
People who have made up their minds to vote against Romney won't change their minds no matter how presidential he looks in debates, said Popkin, author of "The Candidate: What it Takes to Win - And Hold - the White House."
"If you think he's a selfish person who's out for the rich, you can still think he's a confident, comfortable, genial executive who fires you with a smile," he said.
But what do political scientists know, anyway?
They know that people who watched the debate already have their minds made up. It's the people that didn't watch the debate that Romney needed to reach:
A few key numbers suggest that Romney supporters shouldn't expect too much as a result of last night's performance.
One of those numbers is 32. That's the percentage of undecided voters who told Washington Post and ABC News pollsters last week that they were "very interested" in the presidential debates. By contrast, 59 percent of definite Obama supporters and 53 percent of Romney supporters said they were "very interested."
As Scott Clement wrote for The Fix, "The poll’s finding underscores the challenge for Obama and Romney to sway a shrinking and elusive slice of the electorate with less than five weeks left in the contest. In addition to lacking clear support for Obama or Romney, on-the-fence voters are much less likely to say they are 'absolutely certain to vote' than those with firm opinions, even further limiting their potential impact on the election."
As
Nate Cohn of the New Republic points out, no candidate has trailed as much as Romney going into the first debate and gone on to win the election.
To date, Romney hasn't exceeded 47 percent of the vote, and a return to that number would not give him the lead, at least without a decrease in Obama's support. Although it's possible that Romney could convince Obama supporters to join his cause, it would probably be the first instance of the debates breaking out of the prior contours of the race.
None of this is to suggest Obama didn't suck last night. He was an unprepared trainwreck in my opinion. He'll be better prepared next time, Thank God. But the point is that if people are willing to stick by Obama in a crappy economy they will be just as likely to stick with him after a crappy debate performance. Because there really is more than a dime of difference between these two candidates, and the people who've already made the decision to support this President don't want their future and the fate of their families consigned to the hands of the Tea Party.
You can donate to the President's re-election campaign here.