I found myself watching the approval graph of the independents at the bottom of the CNN screen and mentally accumulating approval * time. On that basis it seemed that the two tied on the economy but Obama won it on the foreign policy stuff - particularly Iraq. Both the opposite of what you might expect.
Commited people tend to approve of the criticisms their candidate makes of the other but what was noticeable of the independents is that approval went down whenever one criticised the other and went up when one expressed agreement. McCain's "you don't understand" went down badly and Obama's "John McCain is right..." went down well.
Bearing in mind that it's independents that will decide this election now, then Obama takes this debate by a short head.
But the debate that will be really interesting is the foot-in-mouth Biden versus "You can see Russia from Alaska" Palin. I shall even put a six pack in the fridge stay up for that one
