Axelrod: Becker Was Right About That First Debate

It is not a direct quote. But the point is the same. I argued that the first debate closed the gap on polling not because Obama "bombed" but, rather, because there was upside for Romney. Once he appeared credible, some voters pre-disposed to vote against Obama came home to Romney. Axelrod also agrees that the size of the debate bump was smaller than the media made it out to be.

POLITICO: How much did Debate 1 worry you?

AXELROD: “It was uncomfortable because there was a panic. There are certain things that are predictable in this business: The wheel turns. I always worried about that first debate, because the history of presidents in those first debates is it is like a very, very treacherous pass, and the odds that you're going to have a little bit of a problem are very high, and we did. ... I remember in 1984, when Walter Mondale had a good first debate against Ronald Reagan and people were doubting Reagan: ‘Has he lost it?’ ‘Is it over?’ He dropped like 10 points. He had a huge lead, and the lead closed. So I kind of knew we were in for an uncomfortable period there. But in our data what happened was we went -- that 7-point lead went to like 3 or 4 points, and it was almost entirely because Romney gained. Romney got all that Republican-leaning independent vote back, and obviously it increased enthusiasm among his people.

“Even if we had performed better in that first debate, all the upside was for Romney, because this was the first time that the American people really got a chance to -- 70 million people saw him, and just be performing well, he was going to gain. And, obviously, we helped. But what was interesting about the polling after the debate was we did not lose vote, we did not lose favorability, we did not lose approval. If anything, it ticked up a little. It's just that he made big gains and his numbers which had been under water, almost for months, became more positive.”

Translation: Romney had to appear credible to gain some ground and he did that. There was not much the President could do about that. But the good news is that it also didn't close the gap the way Andrew Sullivan and others worried it did.

Charlie Cook is Kinda Wrong

I like Charlie Cook. He's a very smart guy knows as much about congressional elections as just about anybody. But he's just kinda sorta wrong in his read of what the debates did to the race. Here's part of his analysis:

A strong performance in that first debate would have probably closed the sale for Obama. Instead, his lackluster showing shifted a bunch of voters who had seemed to be drifting gradually in his direction back into neutral, with some reversing course and moving into Romney’s column. ... But this is a horse race, a very close one that can still go either way, and that was not the case before the first debate. The debates—and I would say all three of them—hit a reset button for Romney and put him back into this contest.

The notion that Obama could have "closed the sale" with a strong performance in the first debate is pure nonsense. Similiarly, the notion that "this is a horse race, a very close one that can still go either way, and that was not the case before the first debate" is also nonsense.

Step back and think about the logic of this. The idea Cook is selling is that Obama had a nice lead before the first debate (this is true but it was already starting to recede) and that he could have just held that lead and coasted if he had "a strong performance." This is just fantasy.

The race was already starting to tighten before the first debate. Contrary to what Cook and others think, Obama did not have a disastrous debate performance. If he did, that would be reflected in the polls with his job approval sinking. It isn't. In fact, his job approval has gone steadily up in October. What happened in the first debate is that Romney looked credible after several months of being bashed by Bain Capital ads, discussion of Romney's tax returns, the conventions, and Romney's 47% comments. In the wake of all that, by the end of September, a certain number of voters (a small number but enough to make a difference) who do not care for President Obama were unsure they could support Governor Romney. When these voters saw Romney in the first debate, where he seemed, in a word, presidential, they simply went where they were likely to go in the first place. Polling says they were moving in that direction already. The first debate accelerated that. But it was underway. Some of you may remember that this is exactly the logic I outlined way back in early March when I asked whether Romney would be a credible alternative.

Importantly, there was no possibility that a "strong performance" by the President in that first debate was going to "close the sale." That's just utterly silly.

And let me add just one point to this. You might ask, why does it matter if Charlie Cook has it wrong? What's at stake in this? For starters, Andrew Sullivan, who spent more than a week on the ledge with some insane ideas about what happened in the debate is going to open that window up again and will start threatening to jump. This is sad because I enjoy reading Sullivan's blog and now I'll have to avoid it for another week or so. Second, and more importantly, this nonsensical meme has now infected some of the smarter, more reasonable minds in the journalist class, like Charlie Cook. Whether Obama wins or loses (though it will be worse if he loses), we'll hear this nonsense about how the President looked down too much during the first debate and that's why Romney caught up. It just isn't true.

That's ... Good?

Today was one of those mixed, weird days in the polling. Obama had a very good day yesterday (Wednesday) and I said then that it would interesting to see if he could build on that with another good day on Thursday indicating a nice, little bounce out of the 3rd debate.

It didn't happen ... kinda.

What happened Thursday was sort of confusing. A few of the national tracking polls seemed to move slightly in Romney's direction. ABC/WP was the worst of it (since I think they generally know what they are doing) and that tracker now has Romney ahead 50-47. Rasmussen also has Romney up 50-47. Reuters/Ipsos now has Romney up by 1, 47-46. PPP has moved back to a tie after having Obama up by 1. I could go on. But you get the picture. It seems like Romney had a good polling day in these national tracking polls.

So, Obama getting a nice little bounce out of the 3rd debate is bunk, right? Well maybe. If you look at the state polling numbers today, they are largely good for Obama. PPP released a bunch of polls today and all were good for Obama. They've got Obama up by 4 in Colorado, up by 6 in Wisconsin, up by 2 in Iowa, up by 5 in Virginia, and they've got Obama tied in North Carolina. Those are all good numbers for the President. But that's just one pollster. What else?

NBC/WSJ has a tie in Colorado (which is not a bad result) and Obama up by 3 in Nevada. Fox has Obama down by 2 in Virginia but JZ Analytics has Obama up by 2 there. Grove Insight has Obama up by 2 in Florida and up by 3 in Colorado.

So, these state polls are pretty good overall for Obama ... and the national polls are pretty good overall for Romney. What do we make of it.

I don't know either.

Post-Debate Reaction

It was pretty clear to me that Obama got the better of the debate. Whether it will make any difference is a different question. I do think the debate performance (and, more importantly, the spin about it) has the potential to get the Democratic base a little more fired up. What does that translate into? I don't know. Probably not much.

One person whose stock rose unambiguously though is Seth Masket's. He gets the award for tweet of the night:

The Last Debate

It sounds so final.

I am of two minds about tonight's debate. I can make a plausible argument as to why tonight is more of an opportunity for Romney or Obama.

Why Romney is going to gain ground after tonight's debate: ABC/WP has a poll out this afternoon suggesting Romney is just about as trusted on the issue of terrorism as the President. Romney has made gains on just about every characteristic across the board in recent weeks. Unlike most, I do not think Obama's poor performance was the cause of the change in the race after the first debate. Rather, I think it was that Romney looked credible. And, given the bad electoral environment for the President (right/track, wrong/track, economy, etc.), some voters who didn't support the President but couldn't get behind Romney before ... did. So what does this mean for tonight? Foreign policy is Romney's big weakness. If he appears credible and looks like a President, he can gather more support by dealing with a key weakness.

Why that's wrong: There's nobody left for Romney to win over. There's almost no undecideds left and Romney's base is at its enthusiasm peak. I don't see it getting better for him. So, even if Romney performs really well tonight and even if he's judged to have "won" the debate (whatever the heck that means), there's no potential for a bounce there.

Why Obama is going to gain ground after tonight's debate: Because he's the President. I know this sounds a bit trite but it has real meaning. He ended the war in Iraq, he's drawing Afghanistan to a close, and he got bin Laden. These are all things voters strongly approve of. He has a record to run on here that is actually quite good and he simply needs to remind voters of it. Moreover, Romney has stumbled multiple times on foreign policy including as recently as the last debate. His performance on the world stage has not been good and, on top of that, he's selling some positions that are tough to sell. Romney will talk tough on Iran and, to the extent that that sounds like pushing for another war, it will not resonate with a lot of voters.

Why that's wrong: The first two debates have proven Romney to be a very adept debater. And I don't mean that in the "spin room" sense to set him up for high expectations. I simply mean that he comes to every debate prepared with a game plan and he executes well. The concerns I've raised above are not news to him as his team has raised them I'm sure. They have a plan for everything I've outlined and Romney will be prepared. Finally, there also aren't a lot of undecideds ready to jump to the President's side. There is an enthusiasm gap the President can make up by energizing Democratic voters ... but foreign policy isn't what they're interested in. Indeed, we may see fewer Democratic voters tuning in tonight than in the previous two debates (just a theory).

So what will happen? I think the effect of the debate is going to depend much more on what Romney does and says than what the President does and says. If he makes a big mistake like his mistake on Libya, that could hurt him. If he shines and stands toe-to-toe with the President on the President's turf (foreign policy), I think this debate could help Romney. If I were betting on these outcomes, I'd say Romney having a good night is the 2:1 favorite. And that has me a bit nervous tonight.

Rasmussen's Weighting

As it happens, Mark Blumenthal wrote about Rasmussen's weighting yesterday just around the same time I was writing my blog post. It was a piece about the national polls generally and Blumenthal noted Rasmussen's importance as the one firm that has done state-level snapshots before and after the second debate and the fact that they show slight gains for Romney. But Blumenthal explains these gains are related to the "dynamic" party weighting Rasmussen is using:

Rasmussen is one of the few pollsters to routinely weight its samples so they match predetermined targets for the percentage of likely voters that identify as Democrats or Republicans. The catch, as Rasmussen Reports confirms to The Huffington Post, is that its weighting targets are now adjusting on a weekly basis to match the average party identification for likely voters measured on their last six weeks of calling (after weighting for demographics, but not for party). So the party weights for the past recent week may be slightly different than the party weights the week before.

More important, the weight targets for Rasmussen's national samples grew slightly more Republican in mid-October. Although the data are published on pages available to paid subscribers only, Rasmussen indicates that the national interviews for the week of Oct. 8 to 14 gave Democrats a 1-point edge over Republicans (38 to 37 percent). The party balance for the two prior weeks, Oct. 1 to 7 and Sept. 24 to 30, was a 3-point Democratic advantage (39 to 36 percent).

In the past, Scott Rasmussen has explained that the state-level party weighting targets are derived, in part, from national numbers and the "national shifts appear to provide a good indicator" of mid-year changes at the state level.

A 3-point shift toward a more Republican identification would more than explain the one-point shift to Romney in the five states Rasmussen surveyed this week.

Now, here's the thing. IF you're going to weight by party, the shift that Rasmussen appears to have made does make some sense. There was reason to believe, in the wake of the first debate, that a poll should have a few more Republicans in it and a few less Democrats than before. But then, this is why weighting by party ID is a bad idea in the first place.

Anyway, what this tells us is that Rasmussen is shifting their party ID weights slightly over time but they are always doing so in response to last week's polling. And that's problematic. If you are looking for a snapshot of where the public is today (the point of a poll), using their mood from last week as a determinant is really problematic.

If Women Are Going to Work ...

... then we've gotta make some changes. That's totally what Mitt Romney said last night ... which was also in 2012.

The more I've thought about this, the more staggering it is. Everyone is focusing in on the "binders full of women" line. That was awkward. But what followed was painfully backward and ignorant. Romney said:

I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school.

She said, I can't be here until 7 or 8 o'clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o'clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let's have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.

We're going to have to have employers in the new economy, in the economy I'm going to bring to play, that are going to be so anxious to get good workers they're going to be anxious to hire women.

"IF" you're going to have women in the workforce??? We do! I think there might be several! And, apparently employers are only hiring them because they're desperate. You know, because we've run out of men to hire. I'm not making this up. He said, in the "new economy," employers "are going to be so anxious to get good workers they're going to be anxious to hire women." Good God! Not that!

Wait a second Mr. 1950s caricature ... who will take care of the children (the job women are supposed to be doing)? Mitt responds it'll be okay. We'll just need to be more flexible. Women working! What's next?

I must say I'm a bit perplexed why this is not a bigger deal.

Will the Second Debate Affect the Polls?

It depends on how you understand how the first debate affected the polls. I argued here that the effect of the first debate was to energize Republican voters and to depress Democratic voters. As post-debate polls rolled in, like the Pew poll that had Romney ahead by 4, we saw more Republicans and fewer Democrats identified as likely voters.

One thing that is not happening as a result of last night's debate is some big swing among "undecided" voters. There just aren't very many undecided voters and, if you're undecided at this point, you're a low-information voter who is not paying any attention at all to these debates.

So, what did last night's debate do for Republican and Democratic voters? Republicans who were already energized about Romney will remain so. Romney made mistakes last night but he does a very good job of delivering Republican talking points related to the question asked. Republican viewers came away satisfied with that. The question is whether the debate and, more importantly, the day-after media discussion will energize previously-depressed Democrats/Obama supporters.

My sense is that the debate will do that at least to some extent. The President was feisty, was hitting the key themes Democrats want to hear about, and hit Romney in three ways that Democrats had been worried about:

1) The President reminded everyone of his commander-in-chiefyness with the Libya exchange
2) The President helped fire up women on a number of answers (Ledbetter Act, contraception/abortion, Romney's silly binders answer)
3) The President emphasized over and over that Romney is going to cut taxes for the most wealthy, will favor the most wealthy, and finished the debate by finally raising the 47% issue and, because it was the last response, Romney couldn't bat it down.

How much will this move the polls? Very, very little in my view. But, to the extent it has an effect, Obama will gain a little ground.

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 II

Holy moly has this guy gone off the deep end!

I really don't think his post is worthy of a rebuttal except for the fact that it is so widely read. For that reason, I sent him a lengthy email pointing out the various ways he's just dead wrong. I won't re-print the whole thing here but this is the most important, concluding part:

The President had a bad night and he’s taken a hit in the polls. But it just isn’t nearly what you’ve painted it to be in its effect. Go ahead and show me the path to 270 electoral votes that Mitt Romney has today. We’re now at 12 days since that first debate and the results are pretty cooked into the state polls. Show me Romney winning Ohio. Show me his path without Ohio. Is Romney winning Wisconsin? Sorry. Is Romney winning Nevada? Sorry. If he doesn't win those places, he doesn't win.

Obama is winning today. It’s closer than I wish it would be. The debate made it closer than it could have been. But it wouldn’t have been over without that debate performance. And Romney does not have “the momentum” or the mojo or, most importantly, the lead.

Debate Bounce Receding?

I asked the other day, where are the good pollsters? There have not been any national polls from pollsters I think are good that included a purely post-10/4 sample.

Tonight, the ABC/Washington Post poll came out and it has Obama ahead of Romney 49-46 among likely voters and ahead 50-43 among registered voters. There is still a larger-than-usual gap between registered voters and likely voters so I think the President has room to grow here. But, the bottom line is Obama is ahead by 3 among likely voters and was ahead by 2 among likely voters before the debate in this same poll. As far as this poll is concerned, the first debate bounce is effectively gone.

Meanwhile, Ipsos (not a pollster I consider so great) reports that the President leads among early voters nationwide by a wide margin (59/31). There is more and more evidence pouring in to substantiate the early voting edge Obama seems to have in Ohio. Ipsos also has the President ahead (by just one point) for the first time since just after the first debate.

This is the best polling day Obama's had since the first debate.

Watching Likely Voters

I've argued that the first debate did not so much convince any voters to vote differently as it charged up Republican voters and depressed Democratic voters. This shift has been reflected in the polling as the composition of likely voters has changed just slightly. Of course, slight changes in the composition of likely voters are huge. So, I don't mean to downplay the shift. But I do want to point out that there are two things that potentially work in the President's favor if Romney is banking on a favorable likely voter pool to put him over the top:

1) The difference between likely voters and registered voters is unusually large right now and I think it is likely to shrink. It won't be zero. Romney will get a boost mainly because of demographics. Older people support Romney and younger people support Obama. Older people are more likely to vote. This is the biggest reason for Romney's advantage among likely voters but there are others. But likely voter numbers are a prediction that can change, especially if the President is able to un-do some of the damage done by the first debate. I think Democrats are a bit more enthused after the VP debate. If the President has a better night on Tuesday night, there is every chance the media narrative will be about how Obama "came back," etc. That will fire up the Democratic base and those likely voter numbers might get better.

2) The Obama campaign has been banking on their GOTV operation and they argue it will translate into a real advantage in a close race on Election Night. Nobody knows for sure whether this is real. But we're starting to see some very limited evidence consistent with the Obama narrative. Michael McDonald, who is the authoritative word on early voting, breaks down some of the early voting numbers here. The short version is that it does appear the Obama campaign is outperforming the Romney campaign on early voting, at least in some battleground states. This evidence is supplemented, of course, by the early voting numbers in a couple of polls in Ohio. NBC/WSJ and PPP have both polled Ohio in recent days and both break out early voting numbers. As of yesterday, PPP found that 19% of respondents said they had already voted and these respondents reported going for Obama by a staggering 76/24 margin. Just a few days earlier, NBC/WSJ found that 18% of respondents in Ohio said they had already voted and this group broke for the President 63/37.

Nate Silver finds this mix of early voting data and likely voter findings in polls to be difficult to reconcile and I agree. Silver tweeted this out yesterday:

There's too little data at this point to tell whether the early voting data or the likely voter polling data paints more of an accurate picture of the two campaigns' GOTV efforts. But, as Silver points out, if the gap between likely voters and registered voters closes some, Obama will win.

Where are the Good Pollsters?

The national polling numbers are not matching some of my predictions about Romney's bounce from the first debate and I've been trying to think about why that is. I had predicted that Romney's bounce would ultimately boil down to 1-2 points after fading but it should have faded by now. The various polling averages do not bear that out. Some possible explanations are:

1) My predictions were wrong / based on faulty assumptions, etc. or
2) The national polling numbers are not right

I'm generally skeptical when I hear other people making argument #2. It is not so much that pollsters are never wrong. Of course, there are bad polls and there are bad pollsters. But when all the pollsters are moving in one direction, there's only one way to argue they're all wrong and that is if they are all doing something systematically incorrect. That's possible but not very likely.

That said, there is one thing that jumps out at me when I look at the national polling numbers and the arguments I've made: I don't think many pollsters are good. This occurred to me as I was looking at the recent national polls. I've listed below all of the national polls recorded by Pollster.com in which either most or all of the sample has been since the first debate:

The pattern here is pretty clear and Obama's not doing well in these polls. If you average them, Romney is ahead by 0.8 points overall. I've said elsewhere though that pollsters who interviewed on 10/4 (the day after the first debate) showed huge bounces for Romney. If we include only polls that were in the field from 10/5 and after, Romney still leads though it is a slightly smaller average lead of 0.4 points overall.

So, what's going on? Am I wrong? Is Romney's bounce really this big and this lasting? Maybe. The one thing that jumps out at me when I look at that list of pollsters above is that there are only two pollsters there that I think do a good job. One of the pollsters I think is good is PPP though PPP generally has a bit of a Democratic lean. Their poll giving Romney a 2-point lean seems like really bad news then, right? True, except it does include some respondents from 10/4 and the poll is getting a little long in the tooth now. The other pollster I think is good is Pew. They have Obama down by 4 points ... but the same problems are there as with the PPP poll.

What's most striking about this list when we look at it this way is that I don't think any good pollsters have been releasing national polls this week. Who are the good pollsters in my view? Aside from PPP and Pew, I think NBC/WSJ, ABC/WP, CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac, and CNN are pretty good pollsters. None of them has any national poll that has been in the field since at least last Sunday. That's very strange to me.

Maybe my predictions are wrong. But I really want to see a national poll from one of those outlets before I apologize.

Stuff (It's Irish for Malarkey)

Andrew Sullivan grabs a good photo from Uppity Minx to describe last night's debate:

Perhaps the most important thing to find on Sullivan's blog this morning is that he's been talked down from the ledge ... by Joe Biden.

Biden did a good job last night and he accomplished two things for Democrats. First, he changed the subject from Romney's "momentum," which no longer existed in fact, but stopping the media from discussing it further is helpful. Second, he re-energized some Democrats who were dispirited by the first debate and its aftermath. As you know, I have been arguing that Romney's gain in the polls has been due to greater energy among Republicans and less enthusiasm among Democrats since the first debate. If I'm right that that's what's going on and that Democrats are energized to some degree now, we'll start to see just the slightest narrowing between registered voter numbers and likely voter numbers by Monday or so.

Ryan performed just fine, especially given the difficult position he was in. It isn't easy trying to pretend your numbers add up when they don't. I think Republicans will feel he did just fine and they'll be happy with his performance. But Democrats are very happy with Biden's aggressiveness and his message ... which boils down to one thing: "They're lying." That's it. Republicans won't be affected by it and there are so few undecided voters that their reaction is almost irrelevant. Democrats desperately wanted someone to say "malarkey" loudly and over and over again. And Biden did that.

Romney's Swing State Problem

I'm going to sound like a broken record but here are the "swing-state" poll numbers released in the last 12 hours according to Taegan Goddard:

Colorado: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac)
Florida: Obama 47%, Romney 46% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Michigan: Obama 49%, Romney 42% (Detroit News)
Michigan: Obama 46%, Romney 44% (Gravis)
Nevada: Obama 47%, Romney 45% (Suffolk)
Ohio: Obama 51%, Romney 45% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Ohio: Obama 47%, Romney 46% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Pennsylvania: Obama 47%, Romney 45% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Virginia: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Virginia: Obama 51%, Romney 46% (CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac)
Virginia: Obama 48%, Romney 48% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Wisconsin: Obama 50%, Romney 47% (CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac)
Wisconsin: Obama 50%, Romney 46% (Pulse Opinion Research)

I put "swing-state" in air quotes because Michigan and Pennsylvania are not swing states but I won't get started on that rant again. These are just the states that Goddard lists.

Some of these pollsters are better than others and I won't bother with that discussion right now other than to say, look at where Obama is in polls that call cell-phones. For purposes of our discussion here, let's assume these polls are all equally valid.

Who is likely to win the election today if these polls are accurate? Mitt Romney is ahead in exactly 2 of these 13 polls and he's tied in one more. If we average the polls in states where there is more than one poll, Obama wins every state listed here except Colorado. Now, many of these states (like Florida) would be close. But guess what? Florida has always been close. And guess what else? Let's give Florida to Romney along with Colorado. Now who wins? The President.

Everyone is talking about how the first debate "wiped out" everything that happened between the convention and the debates when Obama built a bit of a cushion. I don't believe that's exactly correct but let's say it is. Now who wins? The President.

Yesterday, the President said, "What’s important is the fundamentals of what this race is about haven’t changed." He's absolutely right.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent snagged an interview with Geoff Garin, arguably the top Democratic pollster in the country and got Garin to outline why Obama is doing so much better in swing states like Ohio than he's doing nationally:

Geoff Garin, the pollster for the Obama-allied Priorities USA, tells me that his polling shows that views of Romney are more fixed in the battlegrounds than nationally. “In the swing states, voters are much more apt and able to quote back the main case against Romney,” he tells me.

Garin adds that his polling has tested voter reaction to various arguments against Romney, such as the idea that his economic policies would favor the wealthy or burden the middle class. He says voter agreement with those suggestions is “higher where the advertising has occurred,” and adds: “All the swing state advertising has had a measurable and lasting impact.”

Tonic for Democrats: Romney and Ohio

The new NBC/Marist/WSJ polls are out for Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. In Florida, Obama is up 1. In Virginia, Romney is up 1. But Ohio. Oh, Ohio.

Obama leads Romney by 6 in Ohio. That is just a terrible, terrible number for Romney. And there's actually quite a bit more good news below the top line for the President. First, Romney has gained 2 points since last week's NBC/Marist/WSJ poll. That's it ... at least in Ohio. The debate bounce is not getting worse. It just is what it is at this point. And if it is 2 points, that's not changing the fundamental trajectory of the campaign.

Second, 40 percent in the poll described themselves as Democrats and 29 described themselves as Republicans. Now lots of Republicans might cry foul and say there's no way there's an 11-point party ID edge for Obama in Ohio. But that argument doesn't work any more than the Democratic complaints about the national Pew poll worked a few days ago. As I said this morning, party ID is a fluid thing and is more a reflection of where the electorate is than pollster hijinks. But, in Ohio, there's something else interesting driving those numbers. 18 percent of respondents said they have already voted and 63 percent of these voters said they voted for Obama. This has been a big part of the Obama campaign's efforts in the state and this poll suggests it may be pulling the party ID of the electorate in their direction.

But wait, there's more bad news for Romney. Among those who have not yet voted but were identified as likely voters, Obama still leads by 2, 48-46.

Want more bad news for Romney? His favorable/unfavorable is still under water in Ohio (44/50).

I continue to believe that Romney is hitting his electoral ceiling in this post-debate period. And, if his electoral ceiling is a 6-point deficit in Ohio (not to mention a 1-point deficit in Florida), I don't see him winning.

I hope Biden does well Thursday night and changes the story. And I hope the President performs better in the next two debates and this thing goes back to where it was before the first debate. But I also think the President would win Ohio if the election were today. And I still don't see Romney's path to victory without Ohio.

Have Voters Changed Their Minds About Obama?

No. That's the short answer.

Much of the criticism of the Pew Poll leveled from despairing Democrats has centered on the partisan makeup of the poll. 36% of likely voters in the poll self-identified as Republicans while 33% self-identified as Democrats. Democrats charge that in 2008 exit polls, 39% of voters self-identified as Democrats compared to 32% who self-identified as Republicans and in 2004 (when Democrats lost a close race), Democrats and Republicans each made up 37% of the electorate. So what gives Pew?

The fact is that the Pew poll is a really well-run poll and there is probably nothing significant wrong with their sampling. As Nate Silver has pointed out many times, party identification is a fluid thing and is more a reflection of where the electorate is at any point than a determinant of where the electorate is. And this brings me to my point.

Romney's post-debate surge is driven by enthusiasm among Republicans (and despair among Democrats) rather than voters changing their minds about the President. More Republicans say they're definitely voting now than before and more voters are willing to say they're Republicans than before. These "new" Republicans have been with Romney all along but were less sure about voting and were less willing to call themselves Republicans. Romney's debate performance energized them and reinvigorated their Republican-ness.

We can see this is the case by looking at some other polls. Gallup has started to release likely voter poll numbers in addition to their registered voter numbers. There is a 5-point swing towards Romney when we move from registered voters to likely voters. That's a BIG swing and it is explained by greater enthusiasm among Republicans. But, what's interesting is that when Gallup breaks out their polling over the last seven days, we see this:

Among registered voters, Obama's standing appears not to have eroded at all. Indeed, Gallup has Obama at a 53% job approval rating, slightly higher than it was before the debate.

We see something similar (from a different angle) looking at the Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen weights their sample by party ID. This means their poll has a consistent number of Democrats and Republicans across time. Not surprisingly, Rasmussen's poll has hardly moved since the debate. It has ranged from Obama ahead 49-47 to Romney ahead 49-47 over the last 10 days. This could be seen as mere statistical noise rather than the effect of a "devastating" (Sullivan's words) debate performance by Obama.

Now, I'm not trying to say that all of this increased enthusiasm among Republicans and depression among Democrats is not a problem for the President. But I am saying that people (I'm looking at you Sullivan) need to be careful about interpreting what's happening as a bunch of undecided voters or a bunch of Obama voters suddenly deciding to vote for Mitt Romney.

The lesson of what I'm saying is that the Obama campaign needs to rally its base. That can be done and the best place to start is with better debate performances from the President and the Vice President that re-energizes Democratic voters. I expect that's going to happen starting with Thursday night.

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%.