IT WAS CLOSE, AND IT'S STILL CLOSE

NATE SILVER

The bad news for President Obama: it’s been almost a week since the second presidential debate, in Hempstead, N.Y., one that instant-reaction polls said was a narrow victory for him. But there is little sign that this has translated into a bounce for Mr. Obama in his head-to-head polls against Mitt Romney. Instead, the presidential race may have settled into a period of relative stability.

There is bad news for Mr. Romney as well, however. The “new normal” of the presidential campaign is considerably more favorable for him than the environment before the first debate, in Denver. However, it is one in which he still seems to be trailing, by perhaps 2 percentage points, in the states that are most vital in the Electoral College.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast was essentially unchanged again on Sunday, with Mr. Obama retaining a 67.6 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, little different from his 67.9 percent odds on Friday and Saturday.

And from The Washington Post

The debates have been a draw: Roughly half of the NBC-WSJ sample (47 percent) said the two presidential debates had made no difference in how they would vote, and roughly the same number said they made them more likely to back Romney (27 percent) and Obama (24 percent). Need more evidence that debates may be much ado about nothing? In 2004, roughly one in three voters said the debates made them more likely to back Kerry, while just 13 percent said the same of Bush. And we know how that one turned out.