The Gallup Poll has updated its numbers with Romney benefiting greatly with a whopping five percent of additional registered voters saying that they now prefer Romney. Everyone including presidential candidate Romney’s most vocal critics agree that Romney performed much better in the first presidential debate for the 2012 elections.
An October 4th/5th Gallup poll discovered that two-thirds of Americans reported watching the presidential debate. Viewers overwhelmingly thought Romney performed better than Obama, 72 percent to 20 percent. Even Democrats rated Romney as doing better than Obama, 49 percent to 39 percent.
This was a “record-high margin” according to Gallup. They say that “across all of the various debate-reaction polls Gallup has conducted, Romney’s 52-point win is the largest Gallup has measured. The prior largest margin was 42 points for Bill Clinton over George H.W. Bush in the 1992 town hall debate.” But while the Romney campaign might celebrate, this five percent increase only ties Romney with Obama at 47 percent even.
The economy and congressional spending was a large portion of the debate. Unfortunately, both sides could be accused of channeling Pinocchio or at the very least exaggerating their claims.
An Obama campaign press release came out the day after campaign. “Even the studies that Romney has cited to claim his plan adds up still show he would need to raise middle-class taxes. In fact, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein and Princeton economist Harvey Rosen both concede that paying for Romney’s tax cuts would require large tax increases on families making between $100,000 and $200,000.”
But that’s not true according to Harvey Rosen, who wrote to weeklystandard.com :
“I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work. It might be that they assume that Governor Romney wants to keep the taxes from the Affordable Care Act in place, despite the fact that the Governor has called for its complete repeal. The main conclusion of my study is that under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same. That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral.”
The Weekly Standard also analyzed how Romney’s tax plan does not require raising taxes on the middle class .
Romney argued that Obama was responsible for doubling the deficit. Not true, since it’s congress that technically passes budgets. The Presidential office is limited to a veto and negotiation. And the $1.4 trillion deficit did not start until 2008 after the Democrats took the majority in both the House and Senate while under Bush. But it can be said that Obama has presided over a Congress that in the last several years has not successfully passed a budget in both houses. And while Obama’s office has suggested multiple budgets, not even his fellow Democrats would vote for it .
You can see the debt figures by year, president, and compared against GDP on presidentialdebt.org .
We will see if the Gallup Poll develops a trend after the next upcoming presidential debate.