POTUS Debate II: The Empire Strikes Back at the Wrath of Electric Mittensaloo

[PDH]

didn't watch this one, but after the first one i thought maybe Obama was throwing in the towel. Has a president ever resigned after one term?

James K. Polk said he was only going to serve one term, then he left office and died a few months later.  He did get a song about him by They Might Be Giants.

[mongers]

So who thinks the black dude and the hispanic chick were plants for Obama? No way they were undecided voters.

Apparently:

Hmm, small crowd, only 82 people, all apparently 'undecided' as ascertained from random blind telephone interviews.

Make of that what you will.

[merithyn]

Black dude may not be ready to vote Obama again, but I don't think he's a true undecided. He's trying to decide between voting for Obama and staying home, no way he's even considering $250m net worth Mitt Romney.

The Hispanic woman clearly cares about illegals being able to get a green card somehow--unless she's been in a coma for the past 8 months she'd know Mitt and the Republicans are absolutely against giving amnesty to almost any illegals, Obama is for it. Unless the issue isn't important to her, I don't see how she was undecided.

I kind of feel like most of those true undecideds now will end up going for Obama, or not voting at all. It seems like those who are going to vote for Romney made that decision after the first debate. If there was any chance of them voting for Romney, that was what would have swayed them.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't know. We learned in '48 that despite popular wisdom, people still change their minds in the weeks before the election (prior to that people assumed more than a month prior to the election all the minds had been made up.) In '80 we learned that people actually made decisions as late as election day, I don't have numbers now but I think some number of voters in like the 5-10% range (and in our system that is decision) decide in the last few days.

So while intuitively I'd agree, anyone swinging for Romney would do it after the first debate and not this one. But history shows people just seem to almost "randomly" make up their minds at the very end...considering the last week is usually controversy free and low on major news, your guess is as good as mine what sways those ultra late undecideds.

[DGuller]

I don't know. We learned in '48 that despite popular wisdom, people still change their minds in the weeks before the election (prior to that people assumed more than a month prior to the election all the minds had been made up.) In '80 we learned that people actually made decisions as late as election day, I don't have numbers now but I think some number of voters in like the 5-10% range (and in our system that is decision) decide in the last few days.

So while intuitively I'd agree, anyone swinging for Romney would do it after the first debate and not this one. But history shows people just seem to almost "randomly" make up their minds at the very end...considering the last week is usually controversy free and low on major news, your guess is as good as mine what sways those ultra late undecideds.

History also shows us that electoral maps are very fluid, where in the space of four years you can go from one landslide to another.  I'd say that's not exactly applicable today, with more or less the same states being battlegrounds for the fourth straight election.

[derspiess]

So who thinks the black dude and the hispanic chick were plants for Obama? No way they were undecided voters.

They weren't quite as bad as the "undecideds" that were at the Clinton town hall debates in 92 and 96.

[DGuller]

According to the most objective and reliable measure, Obama won the debate.  His Intrade price went up 3 points.

[OttoVonBismarck]

A lot of those big landslides were due to things that just wouldn't happen today. Like McGovern giving up 500 EVs to Nixon, that was based on him not being vetted rigorously enough. No way a candidate with that baggage gets out of the primaries.

The other big landslides kind of predate the serious culture war. Once issues like abortion, religion, and gay rights became entrenched it basically locked down large swaths of the country for both parties respectively. In the 80s Reagan could win almost the entire country, but there is no way to be in one of the two parties without picking up enough of the culture war stuff to make you unelectable in some part of the country.

Unfortunate really.

But your point about landslides has nothing to do with undecided voters, the numbers on that are up through recent elections. The undecided voters aren't the ones who locked down various parts of the country for their respective parties.

I saw a good article a few months ago talking about the percentage of voters who made up their minds in 2008 on election day itself, and then the percentage who decided in the last week of the election. I spent a minute or so trying to find it, but couldn't, so that's where I'll leave that point.

Something I think that will be of note in this election is early voting, in some states meaningful early voting has already happened. So for example if 40% of Ohio voted back when Obama had a 10 point lead there, and that lead is representative of the early voters, then late swings in opinion won't matter. (I've never been one to take more than a week or so in the beginning of an election to decide my candidate so I don't know how undecideds think, but I would think if I was unsure I wouldn't want to vote until election day because I'd hate to pull the trigger in early October then find out my guy was banging kids or something on the side.)

[OttoVonBismarck]

According to the most objective and reliable measure, Obama won the debate.  His Intrade price went up 3 points.

That just means trader think it is more likely that Obama will win the election than he was earlier, it does not mean they think Obama necessarily won the debate. You can't possibly know what the traders were thinking about that, only about Obama's chances of winning the election. They could be thinking that he tied the debate, and that was all that was necessary to avoid losing to Romney.

[CountDeMoney]

Garbon kicked it off, but it's officially the Meme of the Night:

[CountDeMoney]

[Viking]

any serious fact checker go over the bits where they call each other liars?

[Viking]

isn't Romney's binder full of women just another example of affirmative action?

I'm watching it late   

[Martinus]

With no pressure, Romney is smooth and handsome.

What kind of twisted reality do you live in? You are seriously a contender for the weirdest poster on Languish these days. Romney is anything but handsome. 

[Eddie Teach]

With no pressure, Romney is smooth and handsome.

What kind of twisted reality do you live in? You are seriously a contender for the weirdest poster on Languish these days. Romney is anything but handsome. 

He looks younger than he is, that's worth a lot.