{"id":40802236002,"date":"2012-10-12T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/10\/12\/veep-debate-has-consequences\/"},"modified":"2022-11-04T14:42:04","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T18:42:04","slug":"veep-debate-has-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/10\/12\/veep-debate-has-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"Veep Debate has Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Joe Biden mugged, laughed and interrupted.\u00a0 Paul Ryan was more composed, but perhaps a little geeky.\u00a0 Both sides firmly believe their candidate won.\u00a0 And that could be bad news for the Republican ticket.<\/p>\n

There is little doubt that Mitt Romney won the first presidential debate last week.\u00a0 Even Barack Obama\u2019s most ardent supporters had to concede this fact.\u00a0 Some \u2013 read Chris Matthews \u2013 reacted as if their team\u2019s ace closer gave up a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth.<\/p>\n

What caught many less partisan observers by surprise, though, is the extent to which that debate changed the election\u2019s dynamic.\u00a0 Usually, it takes an outright gaffe to move the needle on horse race numbers.\u00a0 However, Mitt Romney\u2019s solid and workmanlike performance coupled with Barack Obama\u2019s lack of game revealed just how volatile this electorate is.<\/p>\n

In the national Monmouth University Poll released yesterday<\/a>, 9% of likely voters claim that they changed their vote intention as a result of the debate.\u00a0 Taking into account this group\u2019s current support, this accounts for up to a 4 or 5 point swing in intended vote over the past week.\u00a0 That is precisely the size of the shift most poll aggregators have shown since the debate.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that Pres. Obama\u2019s poll lead peaked at 4 points the week before the debate on both the RealClearPolitics<\/a> and HuffPost Pollster trackers.\u00a0 It was already on a downward trend leading into the debate and stood at 3 points on October 3.\u00a0 However, that downward trajectory accelerated immediately following the debate.<\/p>\n

So why won\u2019t the VP debate help the Romney-Ryan ticket or at least maintain the status quo for the Republicans?\u00a0 Because Thursday\u2019s face-off reinstated the highly charged partisan rhetoric that had dominated this race and was turning off those independent voters who were positively impressed by Romney in the first debate.<\/p>\n

During the past week, voters have enjoyed a bit of a hiatus \u2013 at least on the national level if not in swing states \u2013 of the partisan flame-throwing that has characterized this campaign.\u00a0 Starting with last week\u2019s presidential debate through to Mitt Romney\u2019s recent stump speeches, we have seen a more moderate campaign theme from the Republican side while the Democrats have been forced into a defensive posture.<\/p>\n

The VP debate now gives both sides\u2019 supporters permission to re-engage in the \u201cMy guy is right, your guy sucks\u201d line of attacks that only serve to turn off voters in the middle.\u00a0 These are the voters whom Romney tentatively won over last week.\u00a0 But they are not fully committed to him.<\/p>\n

If the campaign returns to 24\/7 partisan bickering \u2013 as I sense it will \u2013 those voters will likely desert Romney.\u00a0 They will either stick with the devil they know or choose not to vote at all.\u00a0 In this scenario, the incumbent benefits.<\/p>\n

Paul Ryan may have held his own and Joe Biden may have been off-putting.\u00a0 But the end result is that we are likely back to the campaign we saw before the first presidential debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ Joe Biden mugged, laughed and interrupted.\u00a0 Paul Ryan was more composed, but perhaps a little geeky.\u00a0 Both sides firmly believe their candidate won.\u00a0 And that could be bad news for the Republican ticket. There is little doubt that Mitt Romney won the first presidential debate last week.\u00a0 Even Barack Obama\u2019s most ardent supporters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802236002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802236002"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802253576,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236002\/revisions\/40802253576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}