Romney's numbers climb, then plateau? fall?

Mitt Romney continues to show improved numbers in polls published since the presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday and has now made clear gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. The forecast gives him roughly a 20 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, up from about 15 percent before the debate. Mr. Romney’s gains in the polls have been sharp enough that he should continue to advance in the FiveThirtyEight forecast if he can maintain his numbers over the next couple of days. ...538

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Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has closed the gap in Wisconsin after his strong debate performance on Wednesday night. President Obama edges him by a 2-point margin in the state, 49 percent to Romney’s 47 percent, in a new poll from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP). Obama had a lead outside the margin of error in PPP’s mid-September poll, 52 percent to Romney’s 45 percent.

Wisconsin voters think Romney won the debate by a 61 percent to 25 percent margin, and it seems to have helped Romney on his personal rating — he’s now seen favorably by 49 percent of likely voters, while unfavorably by 48 percent. That’s up from a negative 44 percent favorable, 51 percent unfavorable split last month.

The president retains a strong lead in the overall PollTracker Average of Wisconsin, however, as he was breaking away in the state during the weeks leading up to the debate. His advantage now stands at 8.5 percent. ...TPM

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A bounce like this can be ephemeral of course. And the silver lining in today’s numbers for Obama is that there’s at least a bit of evidence that Romney’s momentum has plateaued or even fallen back. The Reuters-Ipsos online tracking poll moved to a 2 point margin yesterday from a 5 point margin the day before. That was with 2 days of 4 of post-debate data. Today though it held steady at a 2 point margin for Obama with 3 of 4 days of post debate data.

PPP polls also gave some hints about the polling its done over the last 3 days. PPP’s twitter feed said Friday’s polling was actually worse for Obama than Thursday. But it then noted that “Saturday interviews we’ve done for polls across the country look a lot more like our pre-debate than Friday numbers.” In other words, PPP’s data seemed to go from bad for Obama on Thursday to really bad for Obama on Friday and then back to something more like the pre-debate numbers on Saturday. ...Josh Marshall, TPM