long island smackdown II

polls taken immediately following the final obama/mccain debate showed obama trouncing mccain. the headline on the huffington post tonight: three for three. here are the results of several snap polls taken with undecided or independent voters. the question: who do you think won the debate tonight?

cnn – obama 58% / mccain 31%
survey usa – obama 56% / mccain 28%
cbs – obama 53% / mccain 22%
time – obama 50% / mccain 24%
politico – obama 49% / mccain 46%

from fox news:

Virtually the entire Frank Luntz focus group on Fox News, which was staged tonight in Miami, said that Barack Obama won the debate. Luntz termed it a "clear majority," but not one person raised their hand when asked if they thought McCain won.

Said Luntz: "None had made a decision to support Sen. Obama before the debate, but more than half supported him after the debate. It was a good night for Barack Obama."

and from time's amy sullivan:

In politics it is generally not considered a good sign when voters are laughing at you, not with you. And by the end of the third and last presidential debate, the undecided voters who had gathered in Denver for Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s focus group were “audibly snickering” at John McCain’s grimaces, eye-bulging, and repeated references to “Joe the Plumber.”

The group of 50 uncommitted voters should have at least been receptive to McCain—Republicans and Independents outnumbered Democrats in the group by almost 4 to 1, and they started the evening with much warmer responses to McCain than to his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. But by the time it was all over, so few of them had declared their support for McCain that there weren’t enough for Greenberg to separate them into a post-debate focus group. Meanwhile, the Obama supporters had to assemble in two different rooms to keep their discussion groups manageable.

results deeper within each of these polls show even more interesting results, like before and after favorability ratings. in each case, obama gained by huge margins, and mccain lost significant ground.

we'll see what tracking polls say in the coming days, and it's certainly not time to break out the champagne (or the non-alcoholic sparkling cider) but at this point it doesn't look good for mccain.