My take is that McCain studied the economy more and came out looking better than most expected him to. He derailed the discussion by talking about pork and cutting the fat from the budget, instead of staying on the financial meltdown and subsequent bailout.
Obama won the foreign policy portion hands down I think. He evidently did his damnedest to win over those who think he is weak on FP. I think he scored a lot of points there tonight...
CNN has the entire transcript here.
CBS and CNN polled some swing voters..CBS's poll shows Obama won the night, but not by much:
CBS News and Knowledge Networks conducted a nationally representative poll of approximately 500 uncommitted voters reacting to the debate in the minutes after it happened.
Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.
Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.
Sixty-six percent of uncommitted voters think Obama would make the right decisions about the economy. Forty-two percent think McCain would.
Forty-eight percent of these voters think Obama would make the right decisions about Iraq. Fifty-six percent think McCain would.
Oh well, what do they know? ;) From another writeup that scans various insta-polls from the networks:
CNN ran an unscientific online poll that drew more than 80,500 votes, 67 percent of which went to Obama compared to 28 percent for McCain.
A similar NBC survey drew more than 291,000 clicks and gave Obama the win with 51 percent compared to 35 percent for McCain, while 7.8 percent said they weren't sure and 6.3 percent called it a draw.
Sigh...
