Microsoft’s Presidential Debates: Gamers Polled over Obama and Romney

Gamers connected to the Xbox Live service on Wednesday night were invited by Microsoft to a poll in order to determine the real winner of the first political debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Microsoft hasn’t yet released the survey results, but Scientific American writes that gamers were asked a total of 10 questions, including the following: “What is the likelihood you will vote in this election?”, “If the election were held today, who would you vote for?”, and “In the election for President, have you decided who to vote for?”

There are some preliminary findings available though, so for example, 57 percent of the respondents said that Obama’s comments on the economy are by far better than Romney’s.

Overall however, Romney is the big winner of the debate, the Xbox Live gamers believe, according to David Rothschild, an economist with Microsoft Research and a fellow at Columbia University’s Applied Statistics Center in New York City.

“The key result was clear—Romney was consistently above his baseline on these questions and Obama was consistently below,” Rothschild told the aforementioned source.

Microsoft is constantly trying to get the most out of its Xbox Live platform and is reportedly planning to launch a Music service sometime this month. The company is currently trying to purchase Rdio, one of the companies that could support its efforts to develop such an online music streaming service.

A Microsoft spokesperson however refused to comment on the matter, but did mention that the Xbox Music would “bring great new ways to enjoy, share and discover new music on all your Windows 8 devices, Xbox 360 console and Windows Phone 8.”