Polls Seem to be Settling (Nate Silver) 10/7/12

[courseofhistory]

Net shift of 2 pts. for Romney. However, the fact that Mr. Romney did not make further gains in the polls on Sunday can be read as mildly disappointing for him. Yay!

Oct. 7: National Polls Show Signs of Settling

By NATE SILVER


Mitt Romney remains in a considerably stronger polling position than he was before last Wednesday’s debate in Denver. But the polls released on Sunday did not tell quite as optimistic a story for him as those in the debate’s immediate aftermath.

The four national tracking polls as published on Sunday were largely unchanged from their Saturday releases. Mr. Romney maintained a 2-point lead in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, but President Obama’s lead held at 2 points in an online poll published by Ipsos and at 3 points in the Gallup tracking poll. In the RAND Corporation’s online tracking poll, which lists its results to the decimal place, Mr. Obama’s lead declined incrementally, to 3.9 percentage points from 4.4 on Saturday.

Only the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll consists of interviews that were conducted entirely after the debate, but the share of post-debate interviews is now large enough in the other polls that we can start to come to some inferences about the overall magnitude of Mr. Romney’s bounce.

My effort to do that is reflected in the chart below. I’ve compared the most recent reading in each poll to the average result that the poll showed in the period between the Democratic convention and the Denver debate. I’ve also listed the approximate share of interviews in each poll that post-dated the debate

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[RedSpartan]

1. Keep calm and carry on...

[tarheelsunc]

2. Looking at the bright side here...

This was definitely the best moment of Romney's campaign and the worst of Obama's. Yet, Obama is still up by an average of 1.7 points, and that's due to a bounce that should diminish Romney's percentage somewhat.

[Dawson Leery]

3. Mondale cut Reagan's lead by 7 points only to lose those gains in the end.

[Drunken Irishman]

4. That's generally why they call it a bounce...

What goes up...