Nate Silver: “Historically, there has been no relationship at all between the unemployment rate on Election Day and the incumbent’s performance. However, there has been a relationship between the change in the unemployment rate in the months leading up to the election and how well the incumbent does. The decline in unemployment under Mr. Obama this year since December is the largest in an election year since Ronald Reagan’s re-election bid, when it declined to 7.3 percent in Sept. 1984 from 8.3 percent in Dec. 1983.”

The current data “would project a narrow re-election for Mr. Obama by about 3 percentage points — similar to Mr. Bush’s margin over John Kerry in 2004. Especially with the Friday jobs report, the economic numbers now seem just strong enough to make the incumbent a favorite for re-election, based on the way the public has evaluated their presidents historically.”

Rick Santorum got philosophical when asked about Mitt Romney’s pledge to cut off PBS funding, the Washington Post reports.

Said Santorum: “I’ve voted to kill Big Bird in the past. I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Big Bird. You can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them, I don’t know. That’s probably that. Can we — can we go back on that one?”

Comedian and “home crafts expert” endorses Bob Kerrey (D) in his Nebraska U.S. Senate race in a very original video.

It’s easily my favorite candidate endorsement of all time.

[Read more…]

The Daily Show’s take on the first presidential debate is priceless.

[Read more…]

No pre-written notes were allowed but a video clip shows Mitt Romney pulling something from his pocket at the start of the first presidential debate.

The Romney campaign says it was a handkerchief.

[Read more…]

A Smart Politics analysis of the first presidential debate finds that President Obama blinked at a rate of 70.8 times per minute while speaking and tallied 1,000 more blinks than Mitt Romney during the broadcast. Romney blinked at a rate of 52.8 per minute.
 
“Various external factors can contribute to elevated blinking rates, such as wearing contacts or, in this case, perhaps the bright lights of the staged televised event. And, of course, some individuals may experience an increased rate simply due to nerves or being placed in an uncomfortable situation.”

The Daily reports that Boston College psychophysiologist Joseph Tecce has
found that since 1980, the candidate who blinks the least during the
televised debates has gone on to win the popular vote.

“Muslim Lier”

— Graffiti vandalism on an Obama campaign building in Iowa, reports the Des Moines Register.

Here are the latest polls from the battleground states, updated as need throughout the day:

Ohio: Romney 47%, Obama 46% (We Ask America)

Ohio: Obama 50%, Romney 49% (Rasmussen)

Florida: Romney 49%, Obama 46% (We Ask America)

Florida: Romney 47%, Obama 47% (Rasmussen)

Virginia: Romney 49%, Obama 48% (Rasmussen)

Virginia: Romney 48%, Obama 45% (We Ask America)

A day after President Obama delivered a lackluster debate performance, Vice President Joe Biden went on the attack “delivering zinger after zinger” against Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, ABC News reports.

Said Biden: “It’s bad enough that Gov. Romney won’t release the details of his tax returns. Now he won’t even release the details of what he plans on doing about your taxes. Seriously. last night the governor walked away from the centerpiece of his economic plan.”

Although everyone wants to see if President Obama’s weak performance in Wednesday’s debate eroded his lead, we’ll have to wait until next week for reliable polling data.

First Read: “And trust us: They will be PLENTY of polls for everyone to see. But realistically, the first polls you should trust that will absorb the ENTIRE impact of the debate and post-debate are the runs released no sooner than Tuesday… You want surveys that were actually in the field Sunday and Monday.”

Charlie Cook: “It would take a very consequential event to change the
trajectory of this race. Time will tell whether Romney’s strong debate
performance on Wednesday night was the event that he needed — particularly
in swing states such as Ohio. But at least he energized his supporters
and sent a clear message that the race is not over.”

Ron Brownstein: “President Obama didn’t have many good moments in this week’s first presidential debate. But it was telling that the few came when he was raising objections to Mitt Romney’s tax, spending, and Medicare plans. The president had much less to say about his own ideas for the next four years. In that way, the debate spotlighted the biggest hole in Obama’s reelection effort: the paucity of specifics he has offered about his second-term agenda.”

Mitt Romney insisted during the first presidential debate that he does support a $5 trillion tax cut.

First Read: “But here’s the problem for the Romney campaign: We know the math how you get to just about $5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. It starts with reducing tax rates across the board by 20%, eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax and erasing the federal estate tax. Together, that comes to $450-$480 billion by 2015. You do that over 10 years (standard budget estimations), and you get about $5 trillion. But what we don’t know is the math of how you offset the nearly $500 billion per year as Romney has pledged, because the Romney campaign has yet to provide any specifics about what he would cut.”

“The math isn’t just hard; it becomes nearly impossible (at least politically) once you account for the pledge handcuffs. The Romney campaign is hoping to make it until November without having to provide its own straw man beyond, ‘that’s not true.’ The downside of getting the real second look the campaign wants is that they will need to provide some answers to this $5 trillion question.”

The U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs in September while the unemployment rate fell to 7.8%.

The Financial Times notes it’s the lowest unemployment rate since President Obama took office.

First Read: “We continue to see these monthly jobs numbers have very little impact on the public. Yet they have had a bigger impact on the tone of the political coverage in a 24- to 48-hour period, and that helps the Obama campaign change the subject from Wednesday night’s debate. In addition, do not underestimate the psychological impact of the unemployment rate falling BELOW 8%. It’s been an anchor around the president’s leg politically for years, not months.”

Wonk Wire has a roundup of reactions.

Mitt Romney’s “widely praised performance in the first presidential debate gave his campaign a boost. History shows these kinds of gains, especially by a challenger, are often fleeting,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Historians have noted this recurring phenomenon in presidential debates: Incumbent presidents, whether articulate or otherwise, often fare poorly in their first encounter with challengers, in part because their debating skills are rusty. After nearly four years in the Oval Office, presidents are accustomed to more deference than this type of blunt face-off. For challengers, meanwhile, the first appearance onstage with a president tends to enhance their stature.”