Obama triumphs over Romney in post-debate polls

A MUCH more aggressive President Barack Obama showed up to the second presidential debate Tuesday, which at times devolved into angry crosstalk with Republican rival Mitt Romney.

Obama won the night’s presidential debate by narrow margins in two surveys taken immediately after the 90-minute town-hall forum ended.

In a CBS News poll, 37 per cent of 525 uncommitted voters who watched the debate declared Obama the winner, compared to 30 percent who said the same of Romney; 33 percent said it was a tie. A Cable News Network (CNN) poll of 457 registered voters gave the debate to the president by a 7 percentage point margin, 46 percent to 39 percent.

The CBS News poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points; the CNN poll’s margin is 4.5 points.

Despite Obama’s slight edge overall, Romney was seen as better able to handle most issues. The trend was most notable in the CNN poll: he had an 18-point edge among registered voters on the economy (58 per cent Romney, 40 per cent Obama), a 3-point edge on health care (49 per cent Romney, 46 per cent Obama), a 7-point edge on taxes (51 per cent Romney, 44 per cent Obama), and, largest of all, a 23 per cent edge on the deficit (59 per cent Romney, 36 per cent Obama). Obama’s only lead was on foreign policy, where a slim margin of two per cent of registered voters who watched the debate said he would handle the issue better (49 per cent Obama, 47 percent Romney).