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gergroy on 04 October 2012
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richardhutnik said:
Kasz216 said:
Mr Khan said:
Media consensus seems to be that Romney won, so now we're going to get subjected to a week (or however long it is until debate #2) of constant media analysis over whether this is a game-changer or not.

I will be interested to see if it has any impact on the polls. Everyone talks about Kennedy-Nixon, but honestly Kennedy-Nixon (the entire election) was one of those "too close to call" things that could have gone either way on election day, statistically.

I just read that apparently at the end of the debate Obama said "Good job, you probably won." 

Either way, this could be surprisingly deadly for Romney.

I mean, if he doesn't get a bump from this at all?  Or even just a small one.

THAT becomes the story... and he's toast.

I wouldn't be shocked if the popular vote is closer then the polls say though.  If your familiar with how poll modeling works.  State wise Obama should still take it pretty easy though.  The Electoral Map is just too heavily tilted towards democrats.

Expectation management is part of it, and what you said could be a possibility. I am not sure, in the day of the Internet, where all you have to do is google to get info, if the debates really do much.  So not sure why there would be much of a game changer out of it.  So, what can be said is true. The goal is to win elections, and debates, at best, have some sort of unindentifiable possible impact on the election that isn't quanitifiable.  The debates aren't sporting events, which produce won-loss records.

In 2004, GW Bush was pretty bad in a number of debates, and people though Kerry won.  It didn't have an impact on the end result.  Kerry still lost.

I don't know if that is quite fair.  Historically, debates have been shown to have an impact on public opinion, from minimal to huge.  I mean, just look at how the debates affected the republican primaries this year.  They had a huge impact on the primary process and were essential to the rise and fall of several candidates.  

Whether or not this debate will have an impact is yet to be seen, but the possibility of debates having a large impact is there.  Even in this age of internet access.