Tinker, what you are saying shows that you don't understand the nature of polling and care more about what you want to hear than what is good data. There is science here and good practice, but you would rather pick and choose results on what you want to hear. That might make you feel good in the short term, but it does not give you the best information. I don't like the recent shift in the polls, but I am willing to admit that it has occurred and consider what might happen next. Are you? Or are you going to keep grasping at straws for what feels good and then be surprised come election day?

Point being, there are multiple models, averages, and indicators which mostly show that the effect of the debate, so far, is to have erased the cushion which had built up for Obama since the conventions. But, that is a return to a point where the was still a significant Obama advantage. Like it or not, that is what the data tell us.

And, actually, it is the totality of the data, the patterns, the trends, the averages, which tell us something, not the isolated fragment which you happen to like.