Matthias is a graduate student at the Goldman School of Public Policy
By most accounts, the debate was way too wonky, not that significant and a general loss for President Obama. Even so, viewers of the debate had strong reactions.
Thanks to a new app by ReactLabs and the University of California Davis, we can actually measure what made people react the strongest. The debate app allowed viewers to give four possible responses which included: agree, disagree, dodge, and spin.
With the debate now over (and in fact, we now have data for the Vice Presidential debate too), we can see most participants identified with the Democratic party and agreed more with President Obama than Governor Romney.
Looking more closely at where most people agreed with President Obama, the first major peak came about forty minutes in when President Obama talked about corporate taxes. The second major peak came during his discussion of his vision of the federal government.
For Governor Romney’s part, the moment of greatest agreement and disagreement was during his discussion of compromise and the importance of the executive leader working in a bipartisan fashion.
Interestingly, even though most people who participated identified as Democrats and felt Obama is the better candidate, a majority of participants felt Romney won the debate.
For a full review of the results, visit React Labs: Educate.