Biden Gets Small Bounce After Debate

Nate Silver: “The debate provides a clear enough line in the sand… that it’s worth doing a before-and-after comparison of the polls. One way to discern this is via our national polling average, where Biden’s lead has inched up to 8.1 points from 7.1 points before the debate.”

“Another way to see this is by comparing post-debate polls to the last, pre-debate version of both national polls and polls of the same states by the same polling firms… And on average, Biden gained 1.5 percentage points from the pre-debate to the post-debate versions of these polls.”

“In some cases, the pre-debate poll was conducted months before the debate. But even if we only focus on the polls that released results at some point in September, the top line is similar: Biden’s gain is 1.4 percentage points, on average. And for what it’s worth, a swing of 1 or 2 points toward Biden is consistent with the effects that first debates have had for challengers in the past.”