With only four weeks to go until Election Day (November 4th if you’ve been living under a rock), now seems like an excellent time to check in and see how the candidates are faring. They’ve each had two debates, myriad media interviews, and their vice-presidential candidates have squared off. The American public has gotten a chance to get to know Obama and McCain throughout their nomination campaign, and this fall’s presidential race.

After the break, we’ll review the debates, their performances, and take a look to see how the candidates are faring.

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Presidential Debates:

The first debate was held at the University of Mississippi and was on foreign policy and national security.

Commentators felt that:

[Obama] played it typically cautious and safe and thus avoided major blunders, knowing if he commits no errors for the next 30 days, he will be the next President of the United States.

McCain however:

Successfully presented a negative case against Obama with an upbeat, optimistic smile — but was unable to paint a truly damning portrait of an Obama presidency, especially on the economy. He exhibited a few physical and verbal tics that made him look his age, including a heavy reliance on his “my friends” crutch

The second debate was held at Belmont University and due to its town hall format, included any issue raised by audience members.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, Obama came out as the winner from last night’s debate.

A majority of debate watchers polled thought Obama was more intelligent, by a 57 percent to 25 percent margin over McCain. Debate watchers also thought Obama more clearly expressed his views by a 2-to-1 ratio, 60 percent to 30 percent.

Half of those polled said Obama answered questions more directly, 13 points ahead of McCain, and by a 14-point margin, debate watchers thought Obama seemed to care more about the problems of audience members who asked questions. McCain did come out on top in one category that neither candidate wants to win. By a 16-point margin, debate watchers thought the Arizona senator seemed more like a typical politician during the debate.

Finally, to add insult to injury, commentators (and Obama’s camp) have jumped all over McCain’s reference to Obama as “that one”.

With this debate so fresh, Red, Green and Blue has a forum for you to sound off in, so head on over once you’ve finished reading here: Presidential Debate: John McCain vs. Barack Obama – Who Won? [Poll]

Vice-Presidential Debate:

The only Veep debate was held at Washington University in St. Louis and promised fireworks. Thanks to Palin’s disastrous broadcast interviews the bar was set quite low for her performance. Correspondingly, Biden was under pressure to avoid embarrassing gaffes, avoid looking sexist, and play to his foreign policy strengths. All of which he was able to accomplish. Accordingly:

…the governor of Alaska did well. But Ms. Palin never really got beyond her talking points in 90 minutes, mostly repeating clichés and tired attack lines and energetically refusing to answer far too many questions. Senator Biden did well, avoiding one of his own infamous gaffes, while showing a clear grasp of the big picture and the details. He left Ms. Palin way behind on most issues, especially foreign policy and national security, where she just seemed lost.

So, where does all this action leave us with one month to go? According to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released Wednesday, Obama has a 2 point lead over McCain. In other words, the race is anyone’s.

Photo Credit: john-mccain-barack-obama by Chesi – Fotos CC via Flickr’s Media Commons