The polling over the last few days has been, shall we say, less than stellar for Team Blue. There's a pretty broad consensus that nationally Romney leads by about 1, and the swing state picture ever so slightly favors the President (with much more data needed). However, as always, there are caveats.
Not to sound like the unskewed polls guy, but the bulk of polling from the last week has been from automated, GOP-leaning firms. For instance, every swing state poll today was from either Rasmussen, or ARG, which both have Republican house effects. The polls from mainstream media organizations, like the NBC/WSJ and CBS/Qpac swing state polls released yesterday, were not terrible for Obama. And since the god awful Pew poll Monday showing Romney up 4, there hasn't been a national poll other than the daily trackers. I'm not sure that other national polls would give Obama better news, but the trackers aren't showing any evidence of Romney's bounce receding.
I think we'll start to get some very strong hints this weekend. PPP is polling pretty much all of the major swing states over the next week. They'll be releasing an Ohio poll tomorrow night. Their last pre-debate Ohio poll showed Obama up 4, lower than his margin in other polls at the time. If Obama isn't leading by at least 2, then I'll be concerned, since as I wrote the other day, Ohio has remained as a bit of a firewall for Obama.
I'd also like to see whether Obama is still leading in PPP's surveys of Florida and Iowa. As it stands, it's quite clear Romney leads in Florida. Iowa hasn't been polled in awhile. If PPP shows either of these states sporting Obama leads, we can breathe a sigh of relief. PPP will sometimes tease their poll results early on their twitter account.
Another hurdle will be the Gallup 7-day tracking polls released over the weekend. I was somewhat optimistic that Obama may gain ground in the likely voter poll once last Thursday's bad polling day was dropped out of the tracker. This did not occur; in fact Romney gained a point and extended his likely voter lead to 2. However, it seems like last Friday was a particularly terrible polling day for Obama. Tomorrow's poll will be the first to not include last Friday's results. If Obama can make some gains, then we'll know that the worst might be over.
The final hurdle will be early next week, when this site (with SEIU and PPP) will release its Weekly Tracker. If Romney maintains or expands on his 2 point lead he had this week, then we're gonna be looking pretty screwed. If Obama's narrowed the gap or taken the lead, then we've stopped the bleeding. Also, some of the major media orgs may come out with new national polls next week, including NBC, ABC, CBS, Pew etc.
Long story short, I think we'll get much better clues about the trajectory of this race in the next few days. If the election were held today, we'd be up very late, and I honestly don't know who'd win. My hope is that Romney's debate bounce is his nadir, and that a better Obama performance at the next debate could at least revert the race back to where it was before the conventions, let alone during Obama's September roll.
5:59 PM PT: Looks like PPP is out with its first tease, and it's not particularly encouraging. They say that in the first night of their Ohio poll, it's "pretty darn close." They'll do more polling tomorrow and will release the results at night. Stay tuned.