Audiences at two public venues in Bend where the presidential debates were aired and a house party stocked with Democrats on Wednesday said President Barack Obama held his own against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Romney supporters were hard to find. The Deschutes County Republican Party, unlike their Democratic counterparts, hosted no official debate event. A party spokeswoman said the local party members were holding private affairs, but demurred when asked if The Bulletin could attend any of them.

At Molly Johnson’s east-side home, where Democratic state House candidate Nathan Hovekamp was a guest, close to 20 Obama voters packed into her living room around a small television.

They watched in silence for the first 15 minutes, then erupted when Obama took a dig at Romney for backing away from tax proposals he’d made earlier in the campaign.

“Well, for 18 months he’s been running on this tax plan. And now, five weeks before the election, he’s saying that his big, bold idea is, ‘Never mind.’ ” Obama said, drawing guffaws from almost everyone in the room.

Caleb Kennedy, watching the debate at the Tin Pan Theater in downtown Bend, noted a lack of specificity on Romney’s part, and said his repeated interruptions of Obama were off-putting.

“I thought Romney looked frantic and desperate,” Kennedy said. “He didn’t cite a single number or fact or detail.”

Monica Stringer said that until recently, she wasn’t terribly impressed by Obama or the health care reforms he pushed, but has warmed up to both within the last year.

She returned to Bend after graduating from college in 2011 and tried to find a job teaching elementary school. Instead, she went back to the job she’d had in high school, but lost that job in March, and with it, the insurance she depended on to pay for multiple costly prescriptions.

The provision of the president’s plan allowing those under 26 to stay on their parents’ health insurance earned him her vote.

“Being straight out of college with $35,000 in debt, there’s no way in hell I could afford my prescriptions without going back on my parents’ insurance,” she said.

Charlie Devine, 33, also at Tin Pan Theater, said both candidates failed to connect with him.

“I got the impression neither one of them were going to cut the deficit,” he said. “They’re just going to keep printing money and borrowing from the future.”

Obama seems to propose continuing along the current course, Devine said, while Romney is relying on over-optimistic expectations of economic growth. Devine said he’d hoped to see someone take a bold stance on reducing spending, but Obama and Romney both failed to deliver.

“Everyone has their own favorite things they want to cut or not cut, we’ll never be able to agree,” Devine said.

At Summit Saloon, baseball ruled the high-definition flat-screen TVs over the bars. But in front of the second-floor big screen, a small debate audience of about 16 dined on nachos and hummus plates.

A random sample after moderator Jim Lehrer signed off yielded four Obama supporters and one no comment.

Matt Neltner, 40, of Bend, a chef, said he felt the president did well.

“I guess I thought he seemed comfortable and in control,” said Neltner, adding the president avoided getting drawn into a fight on Romney’s terms.

On the other hand, Romney didn’t do so bad, either, Neltner said. The Republican candidate displayed a moderate streak Neltner hadn’t seen before.

Matt Cook, 32, of Bend, a physician assistant, said the two candidates, who wrangled over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, were not so far apart on health care as they appeared to be.

Both candidates failed to point out that most health care providers rely on Medicare reimbursement, he said. The government is already a dominant player in health care.

Debate viewers likely found in either candidate’s performance what they hoped to see, and few would admit the candidate they opposed had shown much to admire. In other words, many minds are already made up, said Cook.

“I have to say, nobody watches the debates to make a decision,” he said.