What people expect at tonight's debate

By Richard K. Barry 

Well, for what it's worth, 41 percent of voters think President Obama will do a better job in tonight's debate, and 37 percent think Mitt Romney will. This is according to a Pew Research Center poll.

The current sense is in sharp contrast to what voters thought going into the first debate when 51 percent thought Obama would win and 37 percent Romney.

According to Pew:

Two weeks ago more independents thought Obama would win the first debate by a 44% to 28% margin. Today, more independents expect Romney to win the second debate, by a 42% to 31% margin. Expectations for Romney are also up among Republicans (from 64% expecting him to do better than Obama in the first debate to 75% now).

Few Democrats (9%) think Romney will do the better job in tomorrow's debate, but they are less uniformly certain about how Obama will do. Two weeks ago, fully 89% of Democratic voters said they expected Obama to do the better job. That has slipped to 75% of Democrats going into the second debate, as the percentage who do not choose either candidate has about doubled (from 7% to 16%).

I guess we'll all find out soon enough.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)