The falling Polls after the 1st presidential debate have stopped falling and now seem to be turning. The Rand poll released last night shows the President gaining 1.1%. Some of this poll contains interviews after the VP debate.
Here are some numbers from some of yesterdays tracking polls.
10/11 10/12
Rand O48.17 R46.15 O+2.02 O48.75 R45.65 O+3.1
IPSOS O44 R47 O-3 O45 R46 O-1
IBD O45 R47 O-3 O46 R46 Tie
In each of these polls the President gained ground yesterday. In the IPSOS and Rand polls, a small part of the data comes post VP debate.
We need to Keep in mind that these polls have varying amounts of days that they average, and the poll itself may come out a couple of days after the data is collected, while other polls (IPSOS) have same day data.
If you want to drive yourself crazy by watching the polls closely, you need to understand that almost all polls are "lagging" indicators of voter sentiment. The poll released today indicates how voters were feeling several days ago, depending on the length of the poll. In a fast news cycle that contains debates, gaffs, new videos, economic releases..., what voters feel today, might be a few points different from what voters felt when the first part of these polls were taken.
I chose these 3 polls because they seem to move a little faster than the longer averaged Gallup poll, and who knows what Rasmussen is doing but I do watch the trend with Rasmussen.
I think there's been a bit of unfair criticism of Nate Silver. His model uses a variety of polls along with economic and other data. This inevitably makes his model a bit lagging. He had the President up, while many of the polls were dropping fast. I think his model will start turning around in the next day or 2 and start drifting back up.
So I think we've at least bottomed and as we get more post VP debate data, and the 1st presidential debate becomes a distant memory in the minds of voters, we might start climbing again. And then we do it all over again after the debate on Tue.
UPDATE: The Rasmussen poll just came in, O48 R49. Each gained 1 point from yesterday. It's Rasmussen, what more can you say.
UPDATE: Gallup just came in, R49 O47 likely voters, unchanged from yesterday
UPDATE: 1:20 ET Rasmussen state polls R49 O48. This is the 3rd day in a row that it's been unchanged. I cross my fingers and hope this further confirms the Obama fall is at an end. As the Biden debate becomes a bigger influence over the next few days, we might see this and other polls moving in the "right" direction.
UPDATE: 2:09 IBD O46 R46 unchanged from yesterday.