The ‘debate’ was an interesting test of each campaign’s perception of the race.

Clearly, Barack Obama’s staff was of the impression that he needed to make no mistakes.  His campaign knows the CBS/NY Times poll is way off and that McCain is within 4-5 points.  As a result, he looked as though he was playing ‘not-to-lose’ as opposed to playing to win.  Clearly flustered by his socialism statement to the plumber in Ohio, Obama attempted to divert without counter punching.  His prepared remarks on healthcare and McCain-Bush were delivered without much emotion or salesmanship.  Overall, Senator Obama treaded water in this debate.

Senator McCain knows that he is behind, but closer than many in the mainstream media are leading America to believe.  McCain stumbled through some detail points and does not do well with rote memorization ( not a bad thing ).   McCain used the plumber from Ohio with good effect and that will play with a lot of people watching the debate and will energize his natural base support.   Senator McCain seems more energized whenever he is the clear underdog, it happened during the Republican primary and resurfaced during the debate last night.  Overall, McCain’s best performance since the Saddleback forum this summer.

The debate will not move committed supporters away from their candidate.  However, there are currently anywhere from 10-15% ‘undecideds’ that hold the key to the election.  The sound bites coming out of this debate will focus on ‘Joe the plumber’, ‘Senator Government’, ‘Bill Ayers’, ‘ACORN’ and ‘Born Alive Protection Act’.  All of these bites benefit McCain and no doubt will be emphasized over the next three weeks.

The other point that needs to be emphasized is the statistical basis for many of the polls that are showing Barack Obama with a ten to twelve point lead.  They are oversampling Democratic voters by a ten to fifteen percent margin and are using registered voters not ‘likely’ voters.  Most polling companies move away from this methodology as you get closer to election day.  So, as you analyze polls, look for ones where the sample of Democrats is no more than 7 percent higher than Republicans and focuses on ‘likely’ voters, not registered ( Anyone heard of ACORN H/T Michelle Malkin ).