The numbers are in and 53.9 million people tuned in for the final presidential debate Monday night. Compared to the other debates where the 1st presidential debate at Denver drew the most viewers at 67.2 million and the 2nd presidential debate came in second with 65.6 million, this debate came in a distant third. However, when the debate focuses solely on foreign policy and is up against two sporting events not as many people will tune in.
Which candidates won on substance, which on politics, and who came across as a better commander-in-chief? The snap polls say that the president came away with the debate win. The CNN poll cites the president at 48% compared to Romney who only 40% believe won the debate. But the better question is who can handle the job of being commander-in-chief? Only 63% of those polled believed President Obama can, while 60% could see Governor Romney taking that role. On this, the sitting president does not have much of a lead over his challenger.
While Monday night’s debate on foreign affairs may been a snooze fest compared to the other two, what the candidates didn’t say spoke volumes. Their stares, and zingers were the talk of the town. 6.5 million tweets were tweeted during the actual debate, which was the lowest of the three but still impressive for a span of 90 minutes. The first debate in Denver totaled 10 million tweets, a record for a U.S. political event.
However, similar to that of Romney’s “Big Bird” and “binders full of women” comments, each candidate made a few comments that will be replayed, or re-tweeted, until election day. According to the Twitter blog a few of those moments that generated the greatest volume of conversation throughout the night were the following. At 9:45 p.m. the president said “We also have fewer horses and bayonets. This generated 105,767 tweets per minute. At 9:58 p.m. Governor Romney spoke of Obama’s “apology tour” this generated 87,040 tweets per minute.
And not to be forgotten Bob Schieffer’s comment at 10:31 p.m. “I think we all love teachers” creating 102,339 tweets per minute. So who is now leading the horse race? According to the latest Real Clear Politics national poll average Mitt Romney is still ahead 48.0 percent to 47.1 percent, making this race still too close to call.
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