Now that both conventions are over, McCain and Obama will spend the next several months debating and campaigning. So how did the past two weeks help the respective candidates?

One analyst's, a political science professor at Colorado College thinks the Democrats had the edge, in how smoothly their convention ran, compared to the Republicans, but that being said the Republicans were faced with the unexpected challenge of Hurricane Gustav, which caused Monday's session to be cut short.

"The Democratic convention was near perfect," said CC Professor Bob Loevy.

Loevy says not only did Barack shine, but so did his former rival Hillary Clinton.

"They wanted to unify the party and I think Hillary's speech really accomplished that," Loevy said.

He felt like the Republicans struggled a bit more.

"The second day the purpose of the convention is to deliver John McCain's message, that was completely disturbed by the revelations concerning Republican Vice-president candidate Sarah Palin," Loevy said.

But he says it was also Palin who got things back on track with her speech.

"I really think out of the everything came last night's talk by Sarah Palin," Loevy said.

During McCain’s speech protestors were able to get inside the convention arena which is also something we didn't see at the DNC.

An interesting fact to note, Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin's speech last night had almost as many viewers as Barack Obama's speech last Thursday where the democrats saw record setting numbers.

37-million people tuned in to watch Palin.