Text size:

Polls favor Obama after blame-filled debate

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

October 9, 2008

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - John McCain dismissively called rival Barack Obama "that one," Obama mocked McCain's "Straight Talk Express," and both left the stage to return to the campaign trail yesterday.

CNN's national poll of debate watchers found that 54 percent said Obama did the best job, compared to 30 percent who said McCain performed better. While 51 percent of those polled said they had a favorable opinion of McCain, unchanged from before the debate started, 64 percent said they had a favorable opinion of Obama, up 4 percentage points from before the debate.

By more than 2-1, 65 percent to 28 percent, more people said they found Obama more likable than McCain during the debate, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey.

On the question of who won the debate, a CBS News/Knowledge Networks poll of uncommitted voters found a similar result. Forty percent said Obama won, 26 percent said McCain won, and 34 percent thought it was a tie.

Playing off the second debate, the Obama campaign released a TV ad yesterday that continued the criticism that McCain's health care plan included taxing employer-based health care benefits. "Instead of fixing health care, he wants to tax it," the ad says.

McCain's campaign, in turn, put out a TV spot saying that Obama promises nearly $1 trillion in new spending in the wake of the $700 billion financial rescue plan Congress approved.

It took eight minutes into Tuesday's presidential debate for Republican candidate McCain to land the first blow, blaming Obama and Democrats for the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

"They're the ones that, with the encouragement of Senator Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back," McCain said.

Obama responded: "I've got to correct a little bit of Senator McCain's history, not surprisingly. ... In fact, Senator McCain's campaign chairman's firm was a lobbyist on behalf of Fannie Mae, not me." McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has a stake in a Washington lobbying firm that received thousands of dollars a month from Freddie Mac until recently.