BERLIN, Oct 14 (AFP) - Analysts in Europe, where public opinion is broadly against US President George W. Bush, said the race was still too close to call Thursday despite the strong showing of his Democratic rival John Kerry in three televised debates.
James Naughtie, co-host of BBC radio's flagship "Today" program and author of just-published "The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency", said Kerry had landed some key jabs in the final clash late Wednesday although there was no "knock-out blow".
"I think it was quite important for the president last night to somehow change the direction of that tide -- and I am not sure he did that," he said.
Naughtie said Kerry's performance in the debates had turned around a campaign in which he had been "floundering" but that his gains were not decisive to ensure victory in the November 2 election.
"The main point about last night's debate is that I don't think Bush stopped that process. That would be my gut instinct -- but I wouldn't put a penny on either of them."
Ulrike Guerot, an analyst at the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund, an American public policy institute, said Europeans were often baffled by Bush's popular appeal.
"To me, Kerry was the 100 percent winner of this debate. Bush was unfocused and stuttering, his face was red, his comments weren't serious and neither were his arguments," said Guerot, who watched the debate in Washington.
"In yesterday's debate, a lot of television viewers here thought that Bush did well -- I find that astounding. From my European perspective, Kerry won by far. He argued with specific figures, especially on employment, immigration -- it was very impressive."
Her affinity for Kerry was common among analysts in Europe, where opinion polls show meager support for the current US president.
"Bush aimed to show that Kerry is an outsider when it comes to common American values but Kerry reacted effectively, using good American buzz-words such as equality, constitution, 'it's the people who decide'," a Princeton political scientist, Maurizio Viroli, told Italy's news channel SKY TG24.
And liberal Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which fiercely opposed the US-led war in Iraq, declared the debate an "unqualified victory for the Democrat Kerry".
But there were notable exceptions to the Bush-bashing.
"Bush held his own -- he showed he could manage the debates against a rival who is more 'intellectual'. He knew how to defend himself against the main accusations: Iraq, the rise in terrorism, the loss of allies abroad," said Oleg Barabanov, a Russian specialist in international relations.
"The bottom line is that the debates were positive for Bush because they were not destructive."
Yevgeny Volk, the Moscow office coordinator for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think tank, noted the debates were only one of a range of factors bearing on a race that will inevitably come down to the wire.
"There was no knock-out punch against Bush and Kerry's supposed success has not been decisive during the campaign," Volk said.
"Bush and Kerry have been running neck-and-neck in my opinion. And actual events will have more of an impact than the televised debates," he said.