The results of the flash polls following last night's vice-presidential debate are instructive precisely because they present such disparate representations of what took place when Biden and Ryan squared off in Danville, Kentucky. The CBS poll of undecided voters had Biden winning handily: 50% thought he won, while only 31% thought Ryan was the victor. CNN's poll, however, had 48% of a sample who'd been interviewed the week before and declaring that they intended to watch the debate giving the nod to Ryan as the winner with 44% favoring Biden. This difference is well within the + 5% margin of error for a sample with 382 respondents. Inspecting the composition of this sample, one finds that a plurality of the respondents favored Romney, leading one to discount the results relative to the CBS poll. Persons interviewed by CNN had told Opinion Research Corp personnel the week before that they would be watching and willing to respond to a second interview on the Veep debate.
These differences have been dissected and spun a thousand ways in the post-debate analyses, but the most common characterization features the perrenial rivalry between the eye and the ear. Those favoring Ryan were put off by Biden's facial gestures -- baring of teeth aka smiles -- in the split-screen visuals when Mr. Ryan was speaking. Mr. Biden was seen as being disrespectful by viewers giving the debate to Ryan. As David Brooks saw it, the old guy was treating the youthful challenger with visibly rude disdain. Biden, by this account, was by body language repeating the same mistakes made twelve years earlier by then Vice President Gore in the first presidential debate of 2000 with Republican nominee George W. Bush. Gore, it is worth recalling, was seen as winning on substance in the immediate post-debate polling; however, after four days of media-frenzied discussions of the Veep's invasion of W's space and childish antics during Bush's remarks, majorities came ultimately to conclude that, on second thought, maybe Gore wasn't the winner after all.
The debate about the debate will go on this time with no likely reconciliation between the two accounts, which brings us to the subtitle of this post: "hyperreality" vs. reality. As the following link demonstrates, in full youtube visual splendor, hyperreality trumps reality in this postmodern moment.
See for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFTEkEd9nDo
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Most of my friends who support Romney made that exact argument as to why Biden won. But I disagree with their interpretation of Biden's antics as "childish." In my opinion, Biden's smiles and chuckles, although not very professional, were his way of dealing with Ryan's ridiculous arguments. I watched the debate and noticed that Biden was smiling and laughing most of the time during topics that he was far stronger than Ryan in---foreign policy and Medicare. It's hard for Biden to take Ryan seriously when he doesn't back up his arguments and has little to no knowledge on the topic.
ReplyDeleteI was also annoyed that these Romney supporters were so quick to point out every time Biden interrupted Ryan but just as quick to ignore all of the times Ryan interrupted Biden. Overall, I agree that it was a fairly even-handed debate. I think Biden did well in regaining the ground lost by Obama and am looking forward to seeing Obama show up in full force against Romney in the next debate.