How many people will watch the Presidential Debate?

[Dean]

Pretty self-explanatory. With a lot of speculation that as many as 100 million people could be watching the debate, or that roughly 68% of registered voters could be watching the debate, do you think the TV rating/viewership will fall below, meet, or exceed expectations?

Personally I think around 70 million will watch on the various networks...

[Crazy Jamie]

I'm not really informed about the trends of voters in the US, but in no way can I see 68% of registered voters tuning in to watch the two main candidates argue about the economy and foreign policy for an hour and a half. There is generally less apathy in the US than in the UK when it comes to Presidential Elections, but not that much less.

[~Mr. Indecisive~]

Unfortunately CJ is probably right, and we will end up with 4 more years of Republican policies, some of which they don't understand themselves. Like the basis of supply-side economics, the Laffer Curve. Cutting taxes for the rich only works at a key point on the curve, which if the Republicans actually understood the thing, something I even have a hard time grasping, then there supply-side idea might actually work, but most likely not. However the public will most likely end up believing the BS ads that McCain runs about Obama raising taxes, and vote for McCain, even if his tax breaks for the middle-class are a complete joke.

The only way lowering taxes could increase revenue, is rather than cutting taxes on the wealthy, cut them on the middle-class, which will increase their spending power, and middle-class citizens, when they have extra money, will actually go out and spend it, which will allow businesses to grow, which allows them to hire more people, which will increase the tax-payer base, so while you collect less from each person, you are collecting more. This notion that cutting taxes on the wealthy, will cause wealth to trickle down hasn't worked. So basically if they want the Laffer Curve to work in any way, you have to cut taxes on those who will actually spend it, rather than those who will either save, or invest it more often than not. Then again those are just my thoughts on this.

Meant to say the only way it will increase revenue all the time. Sure cutting taxes on the wealthy may work, but cutting taxes on the average citizen will work more often than cutting taxes on the rich.

[Dean]

It actually wound up being 29.4 million (lol). Kind of sad...

Apparently the 68% I said was actually 64%, but still, nowhere near that many people watched.

Take into consideration that 38 million watched the democratic national convention and 40 million watched the republican national convention. Then also consider that the majority of people who watched the debate were independent voters.

Barack still leads in almost all national polls.

Gallup.com (http://gallup.com/Home.aspx) has Obama leading 8 percentage points, which is probably the widest margin he's led by in their poll since the general election began...

Here's the long and short of it for John McCain: Barack Obama has as large a lead in the election as he's held all year. But there is much less time left on the clock than there was during other Obama periods of strength, such as in February, mid-June or immediately following the Democratic convention. This is a very difficult combination of circumstances for him.

[dimmerwit]

True. But remember he doesn't have a win in the Electoral College prediction (269-266 with 3 tied), at least according to pollster.

[Dean]

I trust FiveThirtyEight.com's multiple resources.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

On the right column, they have a list of states and a grouping of recent polls for each, in many cases with the most recent ones highlighted.

If you scroll through and do the math, of the 50 states and DC... basing it on their projections...

McCain: Safe: Alaska (3), Alabama (9), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Nebraska (5), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), Tennessee (11), Utah (5), Wyoming (3) (Total: 69)
McCain: Likely or Lean: Arkansas (6), Arizona (10), Georgia (15), Louisiana (9), Missouri (11), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), North Carolina (15), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Texas (34), West Virginia (5) (Total: 120)
Obama: Safe: California (55), Connecticut (7), DC (3), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Massachusetts (12), Maryland (10), New York (31), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (11) (Total: 171)
Obama: Likely or Lean: Colorado (9), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), Nevada (5), Pennsylvania (21), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10) (Total: 120)
Toss-Up: Florida (27), Indiana (11), Ohio (20) (Total: 58)

Obama has a total of 291 either safe, likely, or leaning his way.
McCain has a total of 189 either safe, likely, or leaning his way.
Fifty-eight (58) electoral votes are currently "toss-ups".

Of those, I'd wager Indiana will go Republican, Ohio will go democrat, and I really can't predict Florida, but if I had to choose, I'd say Republican. You could have Florida go Democrat and Ohio go Republican. But I think they'll split. Even if both go Republican, Obama has 291 safe, likely, or leaning his way. McCain has over one hundred less in his favor...

Even if you do this with a Republican bias, and assume McCain will get Ohio, Indiana, and Florida, and that Obama will somehow lose the states that are only leaning his way right now (Nevada and New Hampshire), then Obama would still have 282 electoral votes...

[Dean]

Apparently the final figures have come in, and 52.4 million people watched the debates between Obama and McCain, which didn't even make the top 10 most watched debates of all time.

Also someone from FiveThirtyEight.com will be on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight.

[Cpezo]

I watched the VP debate and thought it was pretty interesting.