Black swan events are statistically unpredictable. No one could have predicted Romney would attack President Obama on 9/11 in such an illformed manner.
Nate Silver's nowcast has Romney in the single digits. The nowcast is a snapshot, just based on poll data. If the election were held today, the nowcast is the result based on poll only input.
Now, the polls won't likely be affected by Romney's gaffe until later in the week, because Nate keeps a rolling temporal average. But like Nate says, a gaffe that sticks can cost the candidate 10 points.
One place I can see Benghazi-gate as possibly eroding Romney's base is with veterans. Currently veterans are 13% of the electorate.
U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for president by 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four-percentage-point edge.
If you want to know more about the possible motivations of "filmmaker" and "christian activist" Steve Klein, here is
a good analysis from the Guardian. Anonymous almost instantly fingered the non-existent "half-Israeli" Sam Bacile as Klein the evangelical on twitter.
I heart Anonymous.