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Olympians: Palin; Tacomans: Biden

• Published October 03, 2008

• Comments (0)

So, who won last night? And if we must have a winner, how come we don’t have debate judges with big numbers to hold up at the end like in gymnastics? Just a thought. Without that, we’ll go to the online voting.

Here at The Olympian, our Web poll shows Gov. Sarah Palin winning the debate, with 52 percent to Sen. Joe Biden’s 41 percent, with the more than 600 people voting allowed to say they’re not sure. Those numbers may change, of course as voting continues until the public loses interest.

At our sister paper in Tacoma (and by sister, I mean shared corporate entity) voters have a different view. In a strict Biden-or-Palin match up, Biden comes away with 57 percent.

AFP, the French news agency, says U.S. newspapers are torn on the matter. The Wall Street Journal (surprise!) thinks Palin won. The New York Times (surprise!) thinks Palin lost.

As for me, I say chalk one up for Sarah. We could probably say that in both the presidential and vice presidential debates, there were no rhetorical beat-downs. And if there were an incumbent on stage, I’d say the tie goes to the incumbent. But there isn’t, so I say the tie goes to the person about whom voters were most unsure.

The polls seem to indicate Barack Obama allayed the most fears with his solid performance last week, and I’ll bet the same can be said of Palin last night.

But let us not suffer for lack of opinions. You can read the thoughts of readers of The Olympian.