With the last of the presidential debates set for tonight, 60% of voters describe the first two debates as boring and are fairly evenly divided on whether the contests so far were informative or useless.

Twenty-four percent (24%) say the earlier debates between John McCain and Barack Obama in Oxford, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee, were exciting, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Sixteen percent (16%) are undecided.

Forty-eight percent (48%) say the debates have been informative, but 43% describe them as useless.

Still, given the choice, 63% say they would rather watch a presidential debate than their favorite sports team, and just 28% disagree.

Thirty-seven percent (37%), in fact, believe there are not enough presidential debates, while 20% say there are too many. A plurality (42%) believe the three scheduled this year are about enough.

Eighty-three percent (83%) say they watched at least some of the first two debates.

The final McCain-Obama debate, moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS News, is scheduled for 9 pm Eastern tonight at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

After the first debate on September 26, 36% thought Obama won versus 33% who saw McCain as the winner. Voters thought Obama beat McCain even more decisively – 45% to 28% -- in the second debate on October 7, but they also felt the Republican is better prepared to be president than his Democratic opponent by an 11-point margin.

Nationally, Obama has been maintaining a steady lead in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll since the turmoil on Wall Street began dominating the news.

Women who have consistently polled as more supportive of Obama all year found the first two debates more exciting and informative than men. While 67% of men say the debates were boring, just 53% of women agree. Fifty-two percent (52%) of male voters say the debates were useless, but fifty-four percent (54%) of women describe them as informative.

Similarly, while men prefer watching a presidential debate to watching their favorite sports team by 17 points, women give the nod to the debate by a whopping 53 points.

Men more than women, however, feel by an eight-point spread that there are not enough debates. Women also have a slightly higher belief that there are too many debates.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of Republicans say the debates have been boring compared to 50% of Democrats. Two-thirds (66%) of unaffiliated voters agree.

GOP voters are evenly divided on whether the debates have been informative or useless. Sixty percent (60%) of Democrats, on the other hand, say the debates were informative versus 30% who say they were useless. Among unaffiliateds, 36% say informative, 56% useless.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given Obama’s historic status as the first African-American presidential candidate of a major U.S. political party, blacks found the first two debates far more exciting and more informative than white voters.

New polling on the presidential race was released Monday from Virginia North Carolina, Ohio, and Missouri. See an overview of all five state polls and the latest Electoral College projections. A total of 270 Electoral Votes are needed to win the White House (see 50-State Summary).
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