No spin after the first online debate; viewers pick Obama as their favorite

[ariesgem]

By KEVIN SITES, MON SEP 24, 5:35 AM PDT

Every time a Presidential debate ends it seems the real contest begins, as candidates elbow their way to the nearest television camera to spin their own performance into a tale of triumph.

But in Yahoo's Democratic Candidate Mashup — the first "online only" debate — it was the viewers who made the call, just like they would in a real election.

And who did they decide mastered the mashup? By a 4% margin they picked Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who edged out New York Senator Hillary Clinton with 35% of the vote to her 31%.

Yahoo! News asked users who they would vote for after seeing the online debate. Only a fraction of those who watched debate footage voted — more than a million people watched debate clips, but only 15%, or about 160,000 people, voted. That's not so different from the low-turnout rates we usually see in actual elections.

Younger viewers may have helped put Obama over the top. Some 41% of his audience was under 35, compared to 36% of Clinton's audience.

In an interview with Yahoo! News after the results were announced, Obama said his "doing business differently" approach in politics resonates with young voters.

"That's always been the case in American history — change comes because younger people decide that they want to imagine a different country, and live up to the ideals that they've heard about, but don't always see practiced," he said. "So we're thrilled to have young voters involved; we think that they're going to be a major factor in this race."

Yahoo! analyst Paula McMahon says Internet familiarity was a likely factor. "Obama had the most votes," says McMahon, "so we're theorizing that possibly the younger audience might be a little more comfortable voting on the Internet. "

A request for an interview with Sen. Clinton was not answered.

In the forum, "The Election '08 Democratic Candidate Mashup," which was sponsored by Yahoo!, The Huffington Post and Slate, the candidates were not in the same state, let alone the same room. All were interviewed individually via satellite from the campaign trail.

http://potw.news.yahoo.com/

[fenriswolf]

1. do you have a link?

id like to see the numbers and see how kucinich did.

[ariesgem]

2. The link is below the text.

:hi:

[rinsd]

4. The link is there. They eventually flash the results on video (Kucinich was at 8%)

[flpoljunkie]

5. Click the link and watch the video. Obama 35%, Hillary 31%, Edwards 12%

[acmavm]

3. OOOOHHHHHHHH! A whopping 4%! Good God give it up and just

swear him in now.

[maximusveritas]

6. I don't understand comments like this

Did the OP say anything about this being a sign that Obama will win the election? Did it say anything about him winning by a large margin?
So why the ridiculous comment? I don't get it

[acmavm]

7. The Hils/Barrie crowd spend all their time in these ridiculous my

candidate has better ratings than your shit day after day, every day. It's, as I said, ridiculous.

And if you've been here long enough for 600+ posts, you should be able to figure that out.

[Connie_Corleone]

8. Edwards supporters do it too (Iowa poll)

That's what we do in General Discussion Politics.

[illinoisprogressive]

9. Gobama Gobama