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Sarah Palin surprised some undecided older voters with her knowledgeable showing in Thursday night’s vice presidential debate against Democratic Sen. Joe Biden.

The Alaska governor’s lack of experience had been the main stumbling block in Pennsylvanian Phil Pitts’ decision to vote for her running mate, Republican Sen. John McCain. A Pittsburgh suburbanite in a key swing state, Pitts usually votes for GOP presidential candidates.

This time, Pitts says, he is still undecided. But Thursday night he came away assured that Palin, who burst onto the national scene just five weeks ago, is prepared for the job of vice president.

“Some Republicans thought she was going to embarrass herself. That didn’t happen,” says Pitts, 64. “She held her own on every question.”

He added that people have been more familiar with the Saturday Night Live parody of Palin than with the candidate herself. “Now that they know her, I don’t think they’re as frightened that she’s a heartbeat away from the presidency,” he says.

Pitts had been leaning toward Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama after the first debate between the presidential contenders last week. But now he’s firmly undecided.

Palin didn’t convince Pitts that serving a short stint as Alaska governor, as well as time as a small-town mayor and businesswoman, made her ready to be president. But, he says,

“she did convince me she was ready to stand on her own.”

Democrat O. George Paugh, 70, of Orange Park, Fla., also was leaning toward Obama before Thursday. However, Paugh now feels fairly certain the Democrat will get his vote.

Paugh, a retired federal auditor, said he thought Palin did much better than expected. But the economic chaos of the past week has pushed him toward the Democrats as the best to address the nation’s market woes.

When Palin said McCain is working in a nonpartisan way to solve the current economic crisis, Paugh didn’t buy it. Biden, he says, made a good case that Obama was more interested in helping the middle class.

Biden also convinced Paugh that Obama could be a good commander in chief. That has been a big issue for Paugh, who retired as an Air Force master sergeant after 20 years in the service.

Before Thursday Paugh thought McCain would be the better military leader. But he was swayed by Biden’s defense of Obama’s foreign-policy stances, such as his call to focus on Afghanistan in the war on terror.

“It occurred to me Obama has probably been right on a lot of things and McCain hasn’t. I feel better about him for his approach to war,” Paugh says. “That was one of the key points of the debate.”

One of Pitts’ key issues as a retired public school teacher is education. He was not convinced by Palin’s argument that the No Child Left Behind Act was not McCain’s but merely President Bush’s. Pitts came away believing the Republicans won’t do what’s needed to fund education.

Instead he liked Biden’s denunciation of the program, which calls for stricter testing and standards for students but has been criticized for not giving school districts enough funding to carry out the mandates. Biden also came across as more in tune with middle-class concerns like how to pay college costs, Pitts said. 

But he was disappointed with both candidates as they discussed the economy, taxes and plans for an economic bailout of the troubled financial industry. “It was the same old party line,” he says, with Republicans saying Democrats want to hike taxes and Democrats accusing their opponents of favoring the wealthy.

Palin did convince Pitts that she’s more experienced on the topic of energy, because of her argument that she dealt with the subject as Alaska governor.

Pitts gave Biden slightly higher marks overall on accuracy and persuasiveness, but still considered Palin the debate winner because she exceeded expectations.

Paugh said there was no winner, even though he agreed Palin had done better than expected. He rated the candidates close to even on persuasiveness but gave Biden much higher marks for accurately using facts.

“I think some of the things she said could have been more specific and not so much on the attack side,” Paugh says.

He also was intrigued by what Palin didn’t say: She never boasted of her role in fighting pork by opposing the so-called bridge to nowhere. Her claims on that topic have been discredited and Paugh said it harmed her credibility with him.

After Palin’s first network interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, Paugh considered her a “doofus.”

Thursday night, he said, she was “poised and up on her facts.” But “Biden is by far the more ready of the two to be president.”

Thursday’s event was the only vice presidential debate. But Paugh, Pitts and other voters will get the opportunity to see McCain and Obama debate twice more, the soonest next Tuesday.

Tamara Lytle was Washington bureau chief and correspondent for the Orlando Sentinel from 1997 to 2008.