krose wrote:You must be reading different polls than I am. 70/30 seems like more than a coin flip. It was pretty much inevitable that the convention bump would dissipate.
1) Romney is up in the polls.
2) Broad prediction modeling has cautious modeling assumptions that are banking on reversion to the mean, and in some cases index/market forecasting supplements. It's not an extrapolation of today's polling snapshot.
3) Silver has it at about 65/35. That's slightly better than a coin flip, and there's no way you'd feel comfortable about there being a 35% chance of a highly undesirable outcome in another context. That is reasonably well covered under the term "trouble" when you consider Obama was now-casting at 98% not that long ago. My money would still be on Obama, but you shouldn't understate what's happened here like some nervous sports fan watching his team give up a good lead.
4) Romney's gains aren't primarily a consequence of Obama's convention bounce dissipating. They are a consequence of a sustained, highly favorable media cycle regarding being painted as a huge victor in the first debate.