The first Presidential Debate happened last night at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, after some doubts about whether McCain would be willing to debate in the middle of the financial crisis.

I give McCain credit for coming. I think it’s really important to hear from our candidates - especially now.

I’m not too interested in giving a summary of the debate. I’ll just say that both sides alternately impressed and didn’t impress me, and the end result was pretty much a draw, though I was really happy that since both performed well, voters will have to decide the outcome of the debate based on issues, not gaffes or jabs. Since neither candidate dominated, how you view the debates depends much more on whose world view you agree with than on who you thought crushed the other guy. This is excellent news for all of us.

Instead, let’s talk about what last night’s debate might mean politically for the two candidates.

Polls

We’ll have to wait for some more ‘official’ (read: scientific) polls before we draw too many conclusions. Most of the online polls conducted after last night’s debate showed a slight edge for Obama over McCain, but given that they were from online news sites like CNN and MSNBC, we might be able to presume a slight liberal bias of the website visitors. I don’t think we can make much hay with these numbers.

One thing that might be somewhat interesting, though, as discussed by Justin Gardner of Donklephant, is that a CBS snap poll shows independent, uncommitted voters favoring Obama in the debate by a spread of about 14 points overall (winning by 24 points on the economy and losing by about 8 points on foreign policy). If these numbers are to be believed, it’s good news for Obama in a race this close.

Of course, it’s too soon to know whether these are real numbers yet, or whether independent, undecided voters even exist at this stage of the game.

Implications

This debate was supposed to be about foreign policy, though clearly after the week we’ve all just endured, the economy had to play a major role in the discussion. The candidates did get around to discussing foreign policy after a while, and despite some petty arguments (like over whether Kissinger did or did not say a particular thing), we got to see some contrasting ideas about diplomacy and engagement.

Here’s the thing, though. McCain’s turf is foreign policy, and while he did really well last night, the fact that the polls and pundit opinions were fairly evenly split, after a discussion many people expected to favor McCain, ought to give us pause.

McCain has been slipping in the polls since the lustre of his VP choice has begun to fade, and he really needed to deliver a decisive blow in the debate to claim the lead. We’ll see what happens when the ‘real’ debate numbers come out early next week, but since none of the pundits talking today are saying that one guy did better than the other, it might be safe to assume that the election polls won’t move much. This means Obama will still have a slight edge in the national polls (which may or may not be relevant).

Now onto the VP debates to be held on Wednesday, 10/2. It should be a barrel of laughs, with plenty of fodder for both sides. Check back for a VP debate drinking game/bingo board for your entertainment.

Posted under election 2008, politics