Second Debate - Two Key Moments

There were two key moments in the second presidential debate in my view. One was the exchange on Libya and the other was Mitt Romney's response to the question on equal pay for women. First, let's take a look at the key part of the Libya exchange:



There is a lot of focus on the instant fact check done by Candy Crowley there. But I think the key moment is actually what precedes the fact check moment. Crowley asked the President about where the buck stops on the Libya issue. Obama's response here was simply his best moment in either debate because in that moment, he demonstrated what a President looks like and made Romney look small. That Romney went on to challenge it further and actually get his facts wrong and had to be fact-checked by Crowley only emphasized it. That was a TERRIBLE moment for Romney.

The other key moment in the second presidential debate was Romney's response to the question on equal pay for women. Romney's response was very strange and awkward and the twitterverse exploded with messages about binders like this one.

But the focus on binders misses the bigger problems with Romney's response. Here's the whole answer:



Notice Romney's language here: "I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce, that sometimes, they need to be more flexible." He goes on to explain that flexibility means those women might need certain hours home with the kids. This was just not good at all. "'IF' you're going to have women in the workforce???" Not good.

Remember that the effect of the first debate had to do with key moments in the debate being replayed and reinterpreted as we moved along. The same will be true here and I would argue these clips are going to be playing over and over in the next 24 hours. And that will make those bad moment worse.

Sullivan Unhinged

That's how I describe Andrew Sullivan's most recent lengthy post on the President's campaign. The post was sparked by the latest Pew poll which shows Romney leading by 4 points after Pew had Obama ahead by 8 points a few weeks ago. Here's some of Sullivan's rant:

Look: I'm trying to rally some morale, but I've never seen a candidate this late in the game, so far ahead, just throw in the towel in the way Obama did last week - throw away almost every single advantage he had with voters and manage to enable his opponent to seem as if he cares about the middle class as much as Obama does. How do you erase that imprinted first image from public consciousness: a president incapable of making a single argument or even a halfway decent closing statement? And after Romney's convincing Etch-A-Sketch, convincing because Obama was incapable of exposing it, Romney is now the centrist candidate, even as he is running to head up the most radical party in the modern era.

OK, let's start by discussing that Pew poll in more depth.

The Pew poll is upsetting to many in large part because it is a pollster with a good track record and credibility. This top line caused Andrew Sullivan to descend into italics and exclamation points.

Before the debate, Obama had a 51 - 43 lead; now, Romney has a 49 - 45 lead. That's a simply unprecedented reversal for a candidate in October. Before Obama had leads on every policy issue and personal characteristic; now Romney leads in almost all of them. Obama's performance gave Romney a 12 point swing! I repeat: a 12 point swing.

Exclamation points!!! Italics too!!!

I've been arguing that the Romney bounce from the debate appears to have been about 3 points and that it appears it may be receding from that high. That still seems about right. One thing to notice about the Pew poll is that it was in the field on Oct. 4 to Oct. 7. But, as Mark Blumenthal points out, almost all of those interviews were on Oct. 4 to Oct. 6, when the Romney bounce was at its peak:

According to Pew Research, 1,046 of its 1,201 interviews were conducted on Thursday through Saturday. Just 155 interviews were conducted on Sunday. The full sample had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, with a 3.4 percentage point margin of error among likely voters.

So, this Pew poll is likely overstating Romney's actual support at this moment.

Also, it is one poll! Rasmussen has the race even (even this morning). Gallup has the race roughly even among likely voters. But beyond the polling, let me make a larger point about Andrew Sullivan's absurd reaction. If you are someone who thinks that 90 minutes of bad debating is going to cancel out 4 years of a record worth defending and months and months of bad campaigning by Romney, then you are someone who believes there isn't sufficient wisdom and virtue among the people for self-governance.

The polling (beyond the Pew Poll) doesn't suggest the race has been "thrown away." Get a grip Andrew.

Gallup's "Latest"

Yahoo News has a story right on their homepage (updated a little over 2 hours ago) that says

The latest Gallup tracking poll conducted in the three days immediately following last week's first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama shows the race tied - with each candidate currently garnering 47 percent support among registered voters. Tracking conducted in the two days leading up to the debate showed President Obama with a five point lead - 50 percent to Mitt Romney's 45 percent.

This would be breaking news if it were actually now ... ya know, breaking. It's actually almost 2 days old.

Go to Gallup's site and you'll see that their "latest" polling release has Obama up 50-45, better than the 49-46 margin he had yesterday and the day before. Gallup's tracker does not yet have a full 7 days since the debate so Obama's numbers may well deteriorate from here once we get the full post-debate set of interviews. But it is just not true to say that the story above is "the latest."

Rasmussen's tracker this morning shows Obama and Romney tied 48-48, better than Romney's 2-point lead yesterday. I noted yesterday that Romney's post-debate surge seems to have crested. Both these polls are consistent with that view.

Mark Blumenthal is up with an article this afternoon explaining the Gallup mess for laypeople. Read that if what I've said above is unclear. But importantly, he points out that Romney's bounce may well be fading at this point.

Gallup's Monday afternoon update suggests the initial bounce that Romney received from last week's presidential debate may already be starting to fade.

If only Yahoo news could somehow offer the "latest" by being attached to some kind of worldwide network of computers that sends information around at the speed of light. That would be really cool.

In any case, here's where we are. Obama's approval rating for Gallup AND for Rasmussen is now 51%. Those are good numbers for Barack Obama if they're real.

Now, those are tracking polls and I'll be the first to criticize those two polling organizations for being ... well, not good. But, until we see some actual evidence (good polls) showing Romney with some massive surge, I wish news organizations would stop saying it's happening.

Monitoring the Debate Bounce II

I mentioned yesterday that one reason Democrats shouldn't get too panicked about the post-debate polling is that Romney's gains seem to be just that ... gains for Romney rather than a drop in support for Obama.

This morning, Gallup released their tracker which now includes close to 50% of their sample as post-debate interviews and the topline was unchanged from yesterday (Obama leads 49-46). Similarly, Rasmussen released their tracker which now includes 100% post-debate interviews and their numbers were unchanged from yesterday as well (Romney leads 49-47).

If we use these new numbers to extrapolate out the size of the bounce the same way I did yesterday, we find that Romney got a 4-point bounce in Rasmussen's tracker and is headed for a modest 2-point bounce from Gallup. Average the two and you get a 3-point bounce overall.

But, as I mentioned above, the gains seem to be gains for Romney rather than a drop in support for Obama. Obama's job approval rating in Rasmussen's tracker was 49% before the debate and it is 50% today. The President's job approval has ticked down in Gallup's tracker since the debate but it is still 48%.

Overall, today's numbers (so far) seem to suggest a leveling-off of Romney's post-debate surge. Whether it is just because it has reached its half-life or because the jobs report news is starting to mute it, I think it is starting to look more like it is in line with the 1-2 point bounce I initially predicted.

UPDATE: The Reuters/Ipsos tracker is also unchanged from yesterday (Obama leads 47-45) and that tracker is now almost entirely made up of interviews from after the debate. So, the post-debate Romney bounce seems to be cresting at about 3%.

What If Romney Catches Obama?

Andrew Sullivan frequently uses Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner as a metaphor for Obama outpacing his various nemeses. This particular episode speaks to me more than others:



To me, Romney doesn't seem to have a plan to win. He seems to have a plan to get it to a tie. Then what? It sounds like a bit of a "hoping for a coin flip" strategy. For instance, notice what Neil Newhouse (Romney's pollster) said today in a memo for NBC News on Obama's post-convention bounce in the polls:

"Don't get too worked up about the latest polling," Newhbouse writes in the memo. "While some voters will feel a bit of a sugar-high from the conventions, the basic structure of the race has not changed significantly. The reality of the Obama economy will reassert itself as the ultimate downfall of the Obama presidency, and Mitt Romney will win this race."

So, the plan is that the Romney campaign won't get too worked up and "the basic structure" of the race will reassert itself (I agree) and ... Romney will win. That last part needs a little fleshing out Neil. "The basic structure" of the race ... had Obama winning. Not by a lot. But it does seem like a pretty clear, stable pattern.

The Romney strategy, in short, is to "catch" Obama. They figure he's struggling to get above 50% (aside from the "bounce" polling) and so the "basic structure" of the race is roughly a 47-45 lead for Obama with about 8% undecided. And they figure most of those undecideds will break for Romney in the last few days.

Here's the problem: IF they break 5:3, Romney has "caught" Obama. Romney needs them to break 6:2 his way. I think that even if Romney "catches" Obama, he's going to be in a position much like Wile E. Coyote (Super Genius) above.

Obama Bouncing

It appears my prediction of a very modest to zero bounce was incorrect.

Obama now leads by 4 points in the Gallup and Reuters tracking polls and by 2 in the Rasmussen tracking poll. That's a significant shift when you consider that some of the data in these tracking polls is still from before Obama's speech.

Nate Silver estimates this means Obama has been running about 7-9 points ahead nationally in the post-convention polling

Look, this is called a bounce for a reason. It bounces up and then comes back down. But sometimes it doesn't come all the way back down and you'd surely rather spend your time bouncing from up 1 or so to up 4 or 5 and back than bouncing the other way. And Nate Silver is at least suggesting the bounce could be bigger than a few points. We'll see. But it isn't zero or "very modest."

No Bounce?

It is awfully hard to discern a bounce in Romney's numbers. Lots of polling has been done in the few days since the GOP convention ended but there's not much there there as Mark Blumenthal points out.

Let me posit a few theories as to why this is:

1) The GOP Convention was a flop. Perhaps there's no bounce because the convention just didn't go well (see Eastwood, Clint). I don't think the convention went particularly well so this is at least part of the explanation. I was somewhat surprised to see some rave reviews for Romney's speech, even on MSNBC. I didn't think it was bad. It just wasn't very memorable in any respect.

2) Having the conventions back to back like this with Labor Day Weekend in between mutes the impact of both. I think this is part of the story. In addition, the DNC had a rapid response team at the GOP Convention and the GOP will do the same in Charlotte. The conventions do not dominate the media space or even the tv space the same way they once did (see #3) and, in short, they are right on top of each other canceling each other out.

3) Conventions are simply non-events and the public has caught on. If we take the view from 30,000 feet for a moment, it is important to remember that conventions were actually newsworthy events just about 4 decades ago. In 1968, there was plenty to cover when nominations were at stake. Even in 1976 and 1980, there was drama over the VP nod (Republicans in 1976) and over the Kennedy/Carter kerfuffle (1980). Since then, conventions have really been staged commercials. For a couple of decades, people tuned in thinking they might see something (a la 1980 or 1968). But then the number of channels available exploded as did the various modes of delivery after Al Gore graciously invented the world wide interweb (a series of tubes). So, two things have combined to end the convention's dominance of media. We've all caught on that there's nothing really happening and we've all got lots of other things to watch and do now. In short, we can watch a 3-day infomercial - "3 days to stronger Abs!!!" - or we can watch something that is important - baseball. Now, it is true that even those watching find out what happened (through a media filter mind you) in the couple of days after the convention by hearing about it, reading about it, etc. But they tend to see very small snippets like the big gaffe (see Eastwood, Clint) or the soaring moments (see ... ???).

I think all three of these theories have something useful to offer in explaining Romney's "little to no" bounce. But I think it is probably correct that #3 is the biggest piece of it. The only people tuning in are political junkies who've already made up their minds. Romney's performance (and the whole GOP for that matter) was fairly weak. But there really wasn't much of an opportunity for them to create a big bounce anyway.

UPDATE: Nate Silver has a piece out this morning that somewhat along the lines of the argument in #3. He says in part:

The three smallest bounces for the challenging candidates came in the last three elections. Bounces aren’t what they used to be, perhaps because voters are saturated with information months in advance of an election, increased partisanship and sterilized conventions that may have become too polished for their own good.

The catch is that each of these things is a structural factor, and therefore might predict that Mr. Obama won’t get much of a bounce either. Maybe this is just the new normal.

Larry Kudlow ...

... was disappointed with Mitt Romney's speech. And that pretty much sums it up.

It was a non-event and therefore a missed opportunity for Romney.

Larry Kudlow points out right after the speech that Mitt Romney is going to launch a "jobs tour" after he becomes president. Kudlow observed he didn't know what the heck that means. Answer: It doesn't mean anything. It is an empty platitude ... like the rest of the speech.

How big will the convention bounce be? 4-5 points is my guess and I think it will vanish faster than the usual bounce.

I think where we emerge in about 2 weeks (after both convention bounces fade) is Nate Silver's model showing Obama with a 72% chance of winning. Let's see if I'm right.