With my voter registration party affiliation reading "Independent", lots of people are interested in my opinion at this time of year. So much so, that I was invited to participate in a focus group around the first presidential candidate debate last Friday evening.
I reported to an office building in downtown Denver about 45 minutes before the debate was to begin. The research firm conducting the focus group paid for my parking, and also paid me $150 for my time.
I recognized another person in the room - a friend of my sister's - and we chatted before we were herded into a conference room with two large flat-panel TV screens and a front wall made up of one-way mirrors. Everyone was given a hand-held device on which we were to record our "approval" or "disapproval" of what the speaker was saying, throughout the entire broadcast.
We practiced by giving demographic information about ourselves, and then answering some questions as to the candidates' positions on issues such as foreign policy, the current financial crisis, homeland security, etc.
There was no indication of
anyone's party affiliation in the room. My acquaintance said she was a registered Republican, but she was not sure if she was going to vote that way.
More than one person commented on the seemingly non-diverse group of people in the room. I guessed there were about 100 participants, who were evenly split male and female, and who seemed to range in age from 35 - 55. The very obvious issue was that there was just one black person in the room, and no one of obvious Hispanic descent. According to the census bureau, the Denver metropolitan area is made up of 50% people who consider themselves white, 35% who are Hispanic, and 10% who are black. With those numbers, you would expect a room of 100 random people to have just half of them be white, instead of 98%, as our group was.
During the debate, I approved and disapproved of what both McCain and
Obama said during different portions of the broadcast. It seemed to me that I was equal in my approval / disapproval of both candidates over the course of the debate.
After the debate, we were asked the same set of questions as before, and I felt a little differently after the program than before I saw and heard both men speak. My over-riding observations on the broadcast were as follows:
1 -
Obama is a MUCH better public speaker than McCain.
2 - Why anyone would want the job of president is beyond me - there is so much to fix; how can one person want to take responsibility for all of that?
3 - McCain is the guy I would want defending my country from attack; however, he is NOT the guy to improve the image of America around the globe.
4 - Although the focus of the debate was to be foreign policy,
Obama kept referring to things that need to be fixed domestically. This kind of bugged me, as I thought he should stay on topic, but others in the room felt that
Obama sees the way we deal with global issues as being critical to how we deal with domestic ones.
5 - McCain is distancing himself from eight years of Republican George Bush and likening himself to Republican Ronald Reagan instead. He even talks like Reagan, I think: somewhat grandfatherly and condescending.
6 - My approval rating of both candidates went from 50% (neutral) before the debate to be 55% (approve slightly) after the broadcast.
7. I found out later from the people conducting the research that the demographics of the group were specifically chosen to have more white people in the room. Kind of weird, I thought, but I gathered up my cash payment and left into the warm autumn evening.
