While previous polls showed that voters overwhelmingly expected President Barack Obama to best Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate, a new survey released from Pew Research Center on Monday indicates that predictions for round two are much more divided.
The poll shows that 41 percent of registered voters believe Obama will win Tuesday night’s town hall debate in Long Island, N.Y., compared with 37 percent who said Romney will emerge on top.
Those are very different results from Pew’s first pre-debate poll and undoubtedly a result of Obama’s underwhelming performance in his head-to-head outing with Romney on Oct. 3 in Denver. In that poll, conducted Sept. 27-30, 51 percent of voters said they expected Obama to do a better job in the debate, while a mere 29 percent said Romney would outperform the president.
