Early Poll Results:
· CNN’s poll gives the debate to Biden, 51% to 36%
· Frank Luntz’s focus group found Palin’s performance to be most effective
· CBS News’s poll: 46% of uncommitted voters surveyed gave the debate to Biden, where 21% thought Palin won, 33% thought it was a draw.
· 55% said their opinion of Palin changed for the better; 53% said their opinions of Biden changed in the positive direction as well (from CBS)
· 18% of uncommitted voters are now committed to Obama; 10% are committed to McCain (from CBS).
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The Best Argument of the Night:
Tell us what arguments you like or didn’t like. Email wrrock (at) alumni dot princeton dot edu
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Those who thought Biden won should check their facts
The claim: Biden said McCain voted the same way as Obama to increase taxes on people making $42,000 a year. The facts: McCain never voted that way, he did not vote on vote 142.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/110/senate/2/votes/142/
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The claim: Biden said he has "always" supported clean coal. He said "a comment made at a rope line was taken out of context" by John McCain’s campaign.
The Facts: n the video, recorded at the beginning of Biden’s bus trip across Ohio last week, he is seen responding to a question about why the campaign is supporting clean coal. "We’re not supporting clean coal," he says. "Guess what? China is building two every week, two dirty coal plants. And it’s polluting the United States, it’s causing people to die." As the exchange continues, Biden says: "China’s gonna burn 300 years of bad coal unless we figure out how to clean their coal up, because it’s gonna ruin your lungs, and there’s nothing we can do about it. No coal plants here in America. Build ‘em, if they’re gonna build ‘em, over there and make ‘em clean because they’re killing you."
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The claim: Biden said McCain said he was "surprised" by the subprime mortgage crisis.
The facts: McCain’s use of the word "surprised" came in response to a leading question in New Hampshire last December. At the time, he compared it to the dot-com collapse of the late 1990s, adding: "I was surprised at other times in our history. I don’t know if surprised is the word." Later in the same interview, he said, "When I say ‘surprised,’ I’m not surprised when in capitalist systems that there’s greed and excess."
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The claim: Biden said Obama did not say he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "This is simply not true about Barack Obama," he said.
The facts: At a news conference in New York City in September 2007, Obama was asked, "Senator, you’ve said before that you’d meet with President Ahmadinejad … would you still meet with him today?" He replied: "Yeah, nothing’s changed with respect to my belief that strong countries and strong presidents talk to their enemies and talk to their adversaries."
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The claim: Biden said McCain’s supports "another $4 billion tax cut for ExxonMobil."
The facts: This is a claim that Biden has made before. FactCheck.org has called it "somewhat misleading." McCain proposes cutting the corporate income tax for all companies, not just oil companies. The figure of $4 billion comes from the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund, which found in an analysis that McCain’s tax plan would cut taxes by about $4 billion for the top-five U.S. based oil companies. "But it would also produce a tax cut for companies in other sectors of the economy — a fact Biden fails to mention," FactCheck.org says.
