Ipsos/Reuters Poll: Debate #2 Pre-Post Analysis

Washington, D.C. - Full details of the Reuters / Ipsos Presidential Debate #2 poll is attached, which includes pre-post findings:

• Nearly everyone heard something about the debate, and registered voters have Obama winning 48%-33%, with 19% unsure
• 27% are more now positive toward Obama vs. 21% for Romney
• Obama's favorability has gone up from 55% to 60%
• On policy issues, Obama has gotten a bump on immigration (+4), the war on terror (+3), Social Security (+3), gay marriage (+3), and the federal government deficit (+3), and has remained stable on all others. Romney's numbers have remained within 2 points on all policy areas, pre vs. post-debate.
• On candidate attributes, Obama saw improvement on being eloquent (+5), bipartisanship (+4), tough enough for the job (+4), can be effective in Washington (+4), would be fun to meet in person (+4), Presidential (+3), understands people like me (+3), is a good person (+3), has the right values (+3) and will protect American jobs (+3)
• On Libya/the Middle East, approval ratings have held steady for Clinton (50% approve pre and post) and Obama (46% pre and 47% post), but there's a slight drop for Romney (37% to 33%).
• Registered voters are split when it comes to who they think would be toughest when dealing with China on trade issues: 37% say Obama while 39% say Romney, 24% are unsure. Two thirds (68%) have an unfavorable view of China and 69% believe that China has had a negative impact on our economy.

This is a daily rolling tracker - this means that we conduct 300+ interviews a day, with occasional `boosts', and aggregate data from the previous 4-5 days. The sample overlap that occurs as part of this process means that day-to-day changes will be incremental rather than large.

These are findings from an Ipsos polls conducted for Thomson Reuters from Oct. 13-17, 2012 (Pre-debate), and Oct. 17 (midnight onwards), 2012 (post-debate). For the survey, samples of 1,491 and 655 American registered voters (age 18 and over) were interviewed online, respectively. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the pre-debate poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points for Registered Voters; the post-debate poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points for Registered Voters. For more information about credibility intervals, please see the appendix.

The data were weighted to the U.S. current population data by gender, age, education, and ethnicity. Statistical margins of error are not applicable to online polls. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error and measurement error. Figures marked by an asterisk (*) indicate a percentage value of greater than zero but less than one half of a per cent. Where figures do not sum to 100, this is due to the effects of rounding.

For more information on this news release, please contact:

Julia Clark Vice President Ipsos Public Affairs 202.463.3623 [email protected]

Clifford Young SVP and Managing Director, Polling and Public Sector Ipsos Public Affairs 202.420.2016 [email protected]

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