You sound like a guy with a conservative-leaning blog who probably does things like hold t-shirt modeling competitions to get dates.

Seriously, I think the ratings will be virtually identical between the VP debate and the first Presidential debate. To the extent they’re larger, that may just be a function of the day-of-the-week (i.e. people are more likely to be out and about on a Friday night than a Thursday night). What will be different, I think, is the ideological composition of the audience. I think a lot of Democrats and Democrat-leaning folks will have watched that debate to see if Palin would fall flat on her face and get humiliated. When she didn’t, they probably will lose interest. The proof in that pudding will be to see the half-hour-level data across the networks, as well as to see who tuned into what network(s) to watch the debate.

I predict the second debate will get a lot of attention, but the third won’t. This election is looking increasingly over; as a result, I believe people will be interested in seeing how the candidates respond to questions about the bailout (which will come in next Tuesday’s debate), but interest will fade after that.

My guess is the VP debate will have about as many viewers as the Presidential debate. The difference, though, is that I think the ideological composition of the audience will be very different. The people tuning into the VP debate were, I think, mostly focused on seeing whether Palin would implode or not. (Republicans of course did not want to see her implode; Democrats did). I think the proof in the pudding will come if the viewership fell off during the last half hour of the debate. By then, the people looking to see if Palin would implode would have been satisfied/disappointed that she did not, and would have walked away.

That said, now that this race is heating up and nobody delivered the knock-out blow last night, I would imagine the next Presidential debate will have even more viewers.

She was terrific, she really connects with people. Joe Biden looked as if he had dirt in his mouth the whole night. Very miserable looking person.