A CNN poll of debate watchers released following Thursday’s matchup between Rep. Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden showed 48% of respondents named Ryan the winner and 44% said Biden won. The margin between the two candidates was within the poll’s five point sampling error. A poll taken immediately […] Read more »
What to expect from vice presidential debates
Thursday night, Paul Ryan and Joe Biden will engage in rhetorical combat. To political junkies and poll-watchers, it seems like there is a lot riding on the outcome of this particular vice presidential debate. Hopes are high among supporters of both tickets, but what kind of impact can we reasonably […] Read more »
Vice Presidential Debates Rarely Influence Voters
The chances that Thursday’s vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan will have a major impact on the 2012 presidential race are small, according to an analysis of Gallup trends. None of the eight vice presidential debates occurring from 1976 to 2008 appears to have meaningfully altered voter […] Read more »
Romney erases Obama’s lead nationally after first debate
Mitt Romney now holds a narrow advantage over Barack Obama in the race for the White House — 46 percent to 45 percent, if the election were held today, according to a Fox News national poll of likely voters released Wednesday. That’s a six-point turnaround and a three-point “debate bounce” […] Read more »
Democratic pollster delivers wake up call to Obama
Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg is not known for flinching from delivering bad news to Democratic politicians, and his new diagnosis of Obama’s slippage in the polls is no exception. Greenberg told me in an interview that his new research persuaded him that Mitt Romney beat Obama in the debate for […] Read more »
8 takeaways from the new Pew poll
The latest Pew poll showing former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney ahead of President Obama among likely voters has the potential to rapidly re-orient conventional wisdom about the challenger’s chances of winning. … While the topline numbers in the Pew survey are sexy — politically speaking, of course — and will […] Read more »