NEW YORK, October 6, 2004 (8:30am) -- The mix of issues chosen by moderator Gwen Ifill at last night's Vice-Presidential Debate in Cleveland gained more approval from backers of George Bush than supporters of John Kerry.

Both groups gave high marks to Ifill for the amount of time she spent on Iraq and the War on Terrorism, on Healthcare and Gay Rights, and on Taxes. After that they disagreed: a majority of Bush backers endorsed her question choices on a range of foreign policy and economic issues; Kerry supporters demanded more depth, especially on Trade, Poverty, Social Security and the Environment.

These are the results of the second interactive Citizens Debate Scorecard organized by MediaChannel.org for Campaign 2004. It assembled a panel of more than 4,400 volunteers to monitor the exchange between Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat John Edwards.

Overall, Bush supporters were more positive about the debate than Kerry supporters: more rated it "extremely" helpful in learning about their own ticket's stance on issues (76% v 59% for Kerry supporters); and about their opponents' stance (24% v 19%); more said their man won (96% v 83%). These results are the mirror image of the findings from the Scorecard from last week's Presidential Debate in Miami, which found more positive ratings from Kerry supporters by almost identical margins.

Unlike last week, however, when large majorities of both groups found no favoritism in PBS moderator Jim Lehrer, Ifill fared worse among Bush supporters (67% said she played no favorites v 81% among Kerry supporters). "Despite these complaints by a substantial minority of Bush backers, they tended to give thumbs up to her choice of debate topics," commented media analyst Andrew Tyndall of ADT Research, who devised the scorecard and interpreted the results. Of all domestic issues, Ifill's best rating from Bush supporters was on Education.

A majority of Bush backers rated Ifill as "just right" in her emphasis on a range of economic topics: the Federal Budget, the recovery from Recession, Poverty, Jobs and Taxes. Of these issues, Kerry backers agreed only about Taxes; on all others, more than half voted "not enough."

A similar pattern was found on the national security beat: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Military/Intelligence policy and Nuclear/WMD Proliferation were all issues on which a majority of the Bush backers on our panel rated Ifill's choices "just right" while a majority of Kerry backers scored them "not enough."

Her degree of emphasis on the War on Terrorism got highest marks (69% "just right" from Bush supporters, 60% from Kerry's), followed by Taxes (65% and 64% respectively), Healthcare (63%, 58%), Iraq (61%, 57%) and Gay Rights (57%, 72%). "These five areas on which Ifill received approval from both groups dominated the debate," Tyndall pointed out. Almost as many Bush backers found Ifill's questions "extremely" relevant as Lehrer's last week (38% v 39%). The comparison favored her less among Kerry supporters (41% v 55% for Lehrer).

As for the personal attributes of each ticket, more Bush supporters noted a shortfall in questions about their ticket¹s opponents' consistency and their values; more Kerry supporters found underexamined the opposing ticket's rapport with ordinary people and Vietnam-War-era record. Except for one attribute, these results replicated those found after the first debate. The exception was "Empathy/Rapport with Ordinary People:" after Miami, 52% of Bush supporters wanted more questions on that attribute directed at Kerry (41% of Kerry supporters wanted more about Bush); after Cleveland, 58% of Kerry supporters wanted Cheney to answer more empathy questions (37% of Bush supporters wanted more about Edwards).

The Citizens Debate Scorecard panel was self-selecting so it does not represent a scientific sample. "We improved the balance between Bush and Kerry supporters since the Miami debate, but we still have work to do," Tyndall pointed out (682 for Bush v 2621 for Kerry this time; 523 v 3072 last time). "We continue to report the data by contrasting the two sets of partisans to correct for this imbalance," he explained.

Yet again Fox News Channel is the home of the Bush supporters on our panel: fully 58% of them watched the debate on FNC (47% last time). Among our Kerry supporters, non-commercial television led the way (23% PBS, 17% C-SPAN) with fewer than 1% watching the debate on Fox.

© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.

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