Analysts, Snap Polls Point to Post-Debate Boost for Kerry

Sen. John F. Kerry was widely rated the winner of the first presidential debate, giving his presidential campaign a boost and raising Democratic hopes that the White House race would grow tighter.

Although the experts continued to afford President Bush the edge in the election -- and public opinion will take some time to sort out -- the consensus after Thursday night’s face-off was that Kerry helped his cause. He held his own, observers said, against an incumbent who seemed peevish throughout much of their nationally televised encounter.

Strategists on both sides agreed that the debate heightened the stakes for the next time the two men share a stage, a session set for Friday in St. Louis, when the subject will be domestic policy. The town hall format, with the two candidates fielding questions from an audience of undecided voters, is one that the Kerry camp favored and Bush aides resisted in debate negotiations.

“If the Bush people thought they could close this thing down, it didn’t happen,” said Tim Hibbitts, an independent pollster in Oregon, a state both candidates covet. “The race ain’t over.”

On Friday, the two presidential rivals sought to build on the cases they made in Thursday night’s foreign policy session, sharpening their tone as they rallied their supporters in battleground states.

Bush, campaigning in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, accused Kerry of undermining the morale of U.S. troops with his criticisms of the war in Iraq. He also charged that the Massachusetts senator would dangerously cede control of the country’s foreign policy to other nations.

“The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto from countries like France,” the president told a crowd of several thousand in Allentown.

He continued his attacks hours later at a stop in Manchester, N.H., accusing Kerry of inconsistency on Iraq. “Last night, Sen. Kerry only continued his pattern of confusing contradictions,” Bush said. “After voting for the war, after saying my decision to remove [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, he now says it was all a mistake.”

Aides to Bush worked to dispel the notion that the president had stumbled in the debate. Campaign manager Ken Mehlman and senior advisor Karl Rove, who often keeps his distance from the media, approached reporters during the Pennsylvania rally, saying Bush held his own and downplaying instant polls suggesting otherwise.

“He came across as a plain-spoken man who is committed to winning the war on terror,” Mehlman said, waving off assertions that Bush had frequently appeared irritated.

Kerry spent Friday campaigning in Florida -- perhaps the key state up for grabs on Nov. 2. At stops in Tampa and the Orlando area, he seized on a new government report that faulted the Bush administration for failing to create a single, definitive “watch list” for suspected terrorists.

“It’s a complete failure, and yet this president stands there and pretends to America we’re doing all that we can,” Kerry told a crowd at the University of South Florida campus in Tampa.

He accused Bush of mischaracterizing his position on Iraq during Thursday night’s debate. “Mr. President, nobody’s talking about leaving; nobody’s talking about wilting and wavering,” Kerry said. “We’re talking about winning and getting the job done right.”

Although each side professed to be pleased with its candidate’s performance Thursday night, the mood among opposing party strategists was telling.

Democrats were jubilant after several weeks during which they despaired over Kerry and a campaign many viewed as directionless and usually on the defensive. Kerry sunk in opinion polls over that time, and surveys found his negative image climbing sharply, even as doubts about Bush’s performance persisted.

“There’s a total sea change among Democrats today,” said communications strategist Jon Haber. “Euphoria is the right word.”

Republicans, by contrast, were subdued in their reaction to Bush’s performance.

Michael Smerconish, a Republican who hosts a radio show in Philadelphia, told his morning drive-time listeners that the headline from the debate was “No blood.” Though that may have been good news for Bush, he said later in an interview, it was not necessary a standout night for the president.

“Mediocre” and “uninspiring” were two of the words Smerconish used to describe Bush’s debate showing, though he said Kerry was no better.

Of the president, Smerconish said, “He was so repetitive, and appeared to be searching for words at a number of different junctures.”

A series of snap polls taken immediately after the debate judged Kerry the clear winner. But those types of surveys offer just a quick sampling of opinion and do not necessarily prove anything; the Gallup organization has asked the question in five previous White House races, and in four of them the candidate said to have won the first debate lost the election in November.

Perhaps most famously, President Reagan stumbled in the first debate of his 1984 reelection bid, only to bounce back smartly in the second round and effectively seal the race against Democrat Walter F. Mondale.

“I believe that expectations among Republicans may have been unrealistically high for this first debate, where Kerry handled himself fairly well,” said Don Sipple, a veteran GOP strategist who worked for Bush in his days as Texas governor. “But it could be akin to Reagan in his first debate with Mondale. Bush could come back in the second debate and close the door and lock it.”

At the least, Kerry’s positive reviews seemed likely to break the political momentum Bush recently has enjoyed. The Kerry campaign, forbidden from using actual debate footage in television ads under an agreement with the Bush camp, was preparing a commercial featuring positive newspaper headlines on his performance.

“I think Kerry helped himself by earning a second look,” said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent political analyst in Washington. “I don’t know whether he moved a lot of people ... but it broke his slide and gives him a chance to go on the offensive.”

The Kerry camp sought to downplay expectations of a sudden surge in his favor, saying the race probably would stay close until the end and that the head-to-head poll numbers were unlikely to shift dramatically.

“These debates do not change the fundamental horse race numbers, because it’s only opening up a conversation that we’re now beginning,” said Michael McCurry, a Kerry spokesman. “We believe people are taking a new, fresh look. And that’s a very important achievement for us in the debate.”

Political professionals are aware that the face-to-face sessions can be less important than the interpretation that follows. For that reason Democrats were determined Friday to prevent a repeat of 2000, when then-Vice President Al Gore was initially seen as the winner of his first debate with Bush, only to watch that view shift when later accounts focused on his theatrical sighs and handful of factual flubs.

Even before Thursday night’s session, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe hosted a phone call with 350 “talkers” around the country -- members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers and political leaders in battleground states. They aggressively pushed the party line of a Kerry debate triumph in a flood of e-mails and statements to the media Friday.

“One of the things that is very true in politics is people are always fighting the last war,” said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist unaffiliated with the Kerry campaign. “And Democrats don’t want to be beaten the same way as last time.”

The Kerry campaign was also aware of the dangers of inflated expectations for the next debate. Bush stumbled badly in a few of the early forums in the fight for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination before improving and turning in a number of much stronger performances.

“President Bush has made a career of people underestimating him,” said Tad Devine, a senior Kerry advisor. “It’s fair to say this campaign is not a group of people who underestimate him.... I’m sure we’ll see a much, much better George Bush in the next debate.”

First, however, the two vice presidential hopefuls will square off in a debate Tuesday night in Cleveland.

Although the matchup of Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina will present a contrast in styles and political experience, debates between the running mates traditionally have had limited impact on a White House race.

Times staff writers Michael Finnegan, Matea Gold and Peter Wallsten contributed to this report.

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Crunching the numbers

WordCruncher, a text analysis tool developed at Brigham Young University, examined the responses of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry during the first presidential debate. The computer program compared each candidateÕs emphasis on key topics, ideas and policies. One of the issues they sparred over was the United StatesÕ share of coalition forces in Iraq.

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Estimated coalition forces in Iraq

Country Troops United States 138,000 Britain 8,361 South Korea 2,800 Italy 2,700 Poland 2,400 Ukraine 1,576 Netherlands 1,400 Romania 700 Japan 550 Denmark 496 Bulgaria 485 Thailand 451 El Salvador 380 Hungary 300 Australia 250 Mongolia 180 Georgia 159 Azerbaijan 151 Portugal 128 Latvia 122 Czech Republic 110 Lithuania 105 Slovakia 105 Albania 70 Estonia 55 Tonga 45 Singapore 33 Kazakhstan 29 Macedonia 28 Moldova 12 Norway 10

Countries that have withdrawn forces

Spain Honduras Dominican Republic Nicaragua Philippines New Zealand Armenia

Source: GlobalSecurity.org