HEMPSTEAD, New York (CNN) -- A majority of debate watchers thought that Sen. Barack Obama won the third and final presidential debate, according to a national poll conducted at the end of the debate.
Fifty-eight percent of debate watchers questioned in the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll said Democrat Obama did the best job in the debate, with 31 percent saying Republican Sen. John McCain performed best.
The poll also suggested that debate watchers' favorable opinion of Obama rose during the debate, from 63 percent at the start of the debate to 66 percent at the end of the debate. The poll indicates that McCain's favorables dropped, from 51 percent to 49 percent.
The poll was conducted by telephone with 620 adult Americans who watched the debate. The audience for this debate appears to be a bit more Democratic than the U.S. population as a whole. Forty percent of debate watchers in the poll were Democrats and 30 percent Republicans. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 4
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/15/debate.poll/index.html
