NH focus group gives Kerry a win

Reuters:

A group of citizens in the swing state of New Hampshire, including Democrats, Republicans and one undecided voter, gave a slight edge to Democrat John Kerry in Thursday's first presidential debate.

Before the debate began, three of the seven voters who gathered at Saint Anselm College, a small Catholic university near Manchester, said they were leaning toward Kerry, but without any great enthusiasm. The three who said they supported President Bush were all passionately behind him.

After the debate, all three Kerry supporters said they were much more encouraged and heartened by the Massachusetts senator's performance. The Bush supporters remained solidly committed to the president.

Adam Schibley, a politics student at the college and the group's sole undecided voter, said he was now leaning strongly toward Kerry.

"Kerry answered a few questions I had that were open-ended before the debate started," he said. "Bush struggled more to verbalize his beliefs while Kerry found it easy to put into words exactly what he felt."....

Dentist Lawrence Puccini, a Bush supporter, said that viewed purely as a debating contest, Kerry was the winner.

"Bush had a sour look to him. Kerry showed himself a real polished debater. He kept attacking but he didn't really convince me about what he would do differently. But in terms of the debate, he cleaned Bush's clock," he said....

Others in the group said Kerry scored a solid point when he highlighted the decline in U.S. international credibility by recalling how during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 French President Charles De Gaulle had accepted the word of the president of the United States without the need to see proof.

Henry Wenta, a distributor for a major beer company, was totally committed to Bush before the debate began and remained so after it was over. But he said there was no clear winner to the encounter.