Well, no. Ezra Klein has a great packet of info about the candidates at WonkBlog today -- a must-read. Couple of excerpts:
Wonkbook dashboard
RCP Obama vs. Romney: Obama +3.3%; 7-day change: Obama +0.2%.
RCP Obama approval: 48.8%; 7-day change: -0.8.
Intrade percent chance of Obama win: 73.7%; 7-day change: +4.3%.
Wonkbook’s number of the day: 0. That’s the number of recent elections that we can confidently say were decided by debates.
Gallup, for instance, reviewed their polls going back to 1960 and concluded they “reveal few instances in which the debates may have had a substantive impact on election outcomes.” Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien, in “The Timeline of Presidential Elections,” looked at a much broader array of polls and concluded that there was “there is no case where we can trace a substantial shift to the debates.” Political scientist John Sides, summarizing a careful study by James Stimson, writes that there’s “little evidence of [debate] game changers in the presidential campaigns between 1960 and 2000. ...WaPo
Interesting. And surprising. However, there's more: Romney's proposed $17,000 cap on deductions and then some variations on the same theme; expansion of the federal income tax base; the apparent equalizer effect of Romney being on the same stage with POTUS; the difficulties of being a moderator in a presidential debate; the populism missing from the Republican campaign; "mismanaged austerity"; and more...
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The people have their own opinions about the upcoming debate...
Pew Research
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