At 9p.m. last Thursday, while over 15 million American households were tuned in to “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC, 1.7 million were watching the first Republican primary debate on the cable news channel MSNBC. Yet despite these paltry viewing figures (only 2.2m tuned in to the Democratic debate the previous week), the media twitter means that these political beauty-parades have surprisingly big effects on the polls.
The latest “Survey USA” poll of likely voters in key early voting state New Hampshire has former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney at the head of the Republican pack for the first time (with 32%), beating both Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. This is quite a turnaround for the relatively unknown Mormon – just four weeks ago, despite having raised $24m (more than any other Republican), he was trailing by around 4%.
This has little to do with the debate itself and a lot to do with the pretty arbitrary media consensus on who “won” it.
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