HOW BELIEVABLE WAS BUSH’S IRAQ SPEECH? Watch How Focus Groups Rated the Speech in Real Time

What was the impact of Bush’s Iraq speech? Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has an excellent round up of media and pundit reaction to the president’s primetime TV appearance. Meanwhile, ABC News and CBS News have posted revealing results from overnight polls.

Yet the most entertaining, if not the least scientifically valid guage of public response comes by way of Slate magazine. The online commentary site partnered with HCD Research, a market-research company, in a project to investigate “real time” viewer reaction to Bush’s Tuesday night speech. HCD surveys people over the Internet by allowing participants to rate a video as they watch it on their computers; they then display the results on a graph as the video plays.

HCD gathered key excerpts from the president’s speech, and then played them for a group of 435 Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Participants were asked to rate the believability of what President Bush was saying at any given moment on a sliding scale that ranges from +100 to -100. Each colored graph represents the average of the responses from everyone of that party affiliation. Go to the Slate site to watch the clip and dial reactions