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FiveThirtyEight:
Bear in mind these polls reflect the pre-debate state of the race, as the overwhelming majority of the interviews for the these tracking polls took place before last night's debate was completed. A variety of reactions to the debate seem possible to me, including (in rough order of probability): i) a small gain for Obama; ii) no effective change; iii) a larger gain for Obama; (iv) a small gain for McCain. The reaction in the horse race polls in the days following the debate do not always match the overnight flash polls, as opinions about the debate may change once filtered through the lens of the media. However, since Obama won or tied essentially all objective evaluations of public opinion about the debate, material gains for McCain appear unlikely.
Nate concludes:
Obama ticked upward a couple of points in our win percentage estimate, and is now given a 78.5 percent chance of winning the election. Our more eagle-eyed observers may notice that this improvement occurred even as our popular vote projection barely changed. There are two reasons to explain the discrepancy: (1) Obama got a comparatively "bad" polling result in California (+10 from SurveyUSA), and California has a fairly substantial effect on the popular vote but almost none on the electoral college, and (2) We are now close enough to the election where every day that goes by without McCain making gains in the polls makes him marginally less likely to win. So Obama's win percentage will be ticking up by perhaps half a point a day based on inertia alone.
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