It's all about the bounce in close political races. When a big event happens, like a convention or a 47% gaff, or a debate... the polls will usually take a quick turn. But usually there are 2 phases that determine the sustainability of the political momentum. There's the event itself which causes an immediate reaction and movement in the polls, and then there's the post event which will determine if the movement is permanent.
Clearly Romney had a big debate night which caused many people to forget about his past and is now causing the polls to move in his favor. So what about the post event, how is that going?
Again, there are two questions that need to be asked. What did your candidate do that you can build on, or what did your opponent do that you can attack? Here's where things get interesting. Obama didn't really say anything that his campaign can build on, and he didn't make any major Gaffs that the Romney campaign can attack. Ok, you know where I'm going with this. Romney didn't say anything his campaign can build on, but boy oh boy did he say a lot that the Obama campaign can attack.
So now it boils down to how effective you are at quickly switching the conversation from the debate to, what was said in the debate. So we are in the process of seeing Romney get a bump in the polls from his "performance", and it's going to hurt over the next few days, but is the Obama campaign doing a good job at switching the conversation to the lies and big bird attacks?
Here's an interesting analysis of what happened in the social media world, below the fold.
From Nbc Politics Alex Johnson gives a very interesting picture of how the conversation in the social media world rapidly changed yesterday.
The immediate consensus that Mitt Romney won Wednesday's presidential debate has eroded significantly as fact-checkers have weighed in and supporters of President Barack Obama have fought back, according to NBCPolitics' computer-assisted analysis of more than 1.3 million post-debate comments on social media.
The analysis suggests that as debate over a news event continues unmediated over time, the impact of the conventional wisdom of journalists and partisan commentators can be mitigated.
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A visual representation of the discussion in the 90 minutes immediately after the debate, as pundits chewed it over on TV postgame shows, indicates the breadth of consensus. Notice that even when people talked about Obama, one of the primary subtopics was "Romney Won The Debate":
We all should know by now that Romney was looking very good on Wed. evening and through most of Thursday. But we should also know that Obama has one of the fastest and most effective response teams I've ever seen, and that his supporters are pretty savvy with social media. By Thursday afternoon things were beginning to change and by Friday something different was beginning to happen.
Particularly influential was a commentary Thursday morning by the liberal blog Think Progress:
Pundits from both sides of the aisle have lauded Mitt Romney's strong debate performance, praising his preparedness and ability to challenge President Obama's policies and accomplishments. But Romney only accomplished this goal by repeatedly misleading viewers. He spoke for 38 minutes of the 90 minute debate and told at least 27 myths.
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By Friday morning, the counterargument that Obama had actually won on substance had taken root, with online sentiment now favoring the president:
So according to this excellent analysis, and I encourage you to go to the link at the top and take a look at some of the supporting tweets, the tide is now turning from the "performance" to the substance. Now whether the substance part of this is going to win in the end is still undetermined. Its going to be up to us and the campaign staff to go to as many websites as possible and keep Romney's lies and attacks on Big Bird the main topic of conversation.
We also have to consider that in reality, very few people were actually persuaded by Romney, maybe 3 or 4% of the electorate, and chances are they are very uninformed about who Romney really is. Again, if any of these people are your friends and neighbors, we need to inform them of the truth. They haven't been paying attention up until now, but now they're probably ready to start talking.
Obama has the substance part of a debate down, and he has to work on the performance part, but he's got 2 more chances to win the performance phase of the debate. But it's going to be up to us to go out and help him win the Post debate phase.