Citizens Want Debate Moderators to Challenge Candidate Spin

NEW YORK -- John McCain's supporters seemed happy with the ground rules of the second presidential debate in Nashville. Barack Obama's supporters seemed happy with the results.

A large portion of the questions were his own. "Brokaw's balance of issues received high marks from partisans of both candidates," said Andrew Tyndall of the Tyndall Report, who designed the survey. "And their complaints about bias were in perfect balance, too."

The panel thought that Brokaw's decision not to fact-check the candidates or challenge their spin was a problem: 83% of Obama supporters and 75% of McCain supporters wanted to see more challenging follow-up questions from the moderator.

"Like other moderators before him, Brokaw allowed the senators to avoid answering questions and meander to their own comfort zones," said one volunteer rater.

Republican McCain has long insisted that he prefers the town hall format for political debates. And, according to the panel, his supporters share his preference. Almost half the McCain partisans (48% vs. 24% for Barack Obama supporters) judged the town hall format in Nashville to be superior to the moderated format 11 days ago in Oxford, Miss.

By contrast, almost twice as many Obama supporters in the panel preferred Jim Lehrer of PBS, the Mississippi moderator, over Brokaw (43% vs. 21%) in a head-to-head comparison. After the Mississippi debate, 42% of Obama supporters rated Lehrer's performance as "excellent"; after the Nashville town hall, Brokaw received a lower 28% "excellent" rating from Obama's fans.

Despite the format, Obama's supporters were more likely to say their candidate won in Nashville (92% vs. 76% in Mississippi), whereas McCain's supporters saw no improvement (84% said he won both). McCain's supporters distinguished between their candidate's performance in the foreign policy sequence of the town hall compared with economic and social policy: 92% said McCain won in foreign policy, only 80% and 70% in the latter issues.

Almost half the volunteers in the panel stated that it taught them nothing new (45% of Obama supporters, 55% of McCain's) about their opponent's views, a steep rise from the 29% and 37%, respectively, who said the debate in Mississippi was "not at all" helpful in learning the candidates' stances on the issues.

Brokaw received high praise for his choice of issues. More than half of each group of supporters (64% of Obama supporters, 50% of McCain's) found the questions "extremely" serious and relevant. Brokaw received a "just right" rating from more than half of the members of both groups for his focus on four economic issues -- housing, taxes, the financial crisis and federal spending (62%, 62%, 59% and 59%) -- as well as energy and health care (70% and 74%). He also drew praise as "just right" for his focus on war and peace, terrorism and human rights and genocide (66%, 70% and 65%).

Criticism of Brokaw mostly concerned what he omitted. A majority of both groups complained about Brokaw's lack of questioning on crime and abortion (71% and 70%). Almost all McCain supporters (92%) wanted questions on immigration; almost all Obama supporters (85%) wanted questions on poverty.

There were few complaints about Brokaw's bias toward one candidate or the other. Most of the members of each group of supporters found no favoritism (74% of Obama's, 70% of McCain's); a minority saw evidence of bias, almost always against their preferred candidate.

Although Free Press extended outreach to all parts of the political spectrum, Obama supporters considerably outnumbered McCain's in survey respondents, as they have in our two previous panels. To avoid drowning out the Republican perspective, Tyndall contrasted the ratings of the two groups rather than combining them. Consisting of volunteers rather than a random sample, these results cannot be projected to the population at large.