Nate Silver: “On average, the four tracking polls showed Mr. Obama with a 3.7 percentage point lead between the convention and the debate… Based on the numbers that the tracking polls published on Sunday, however, Mr. Obama’s lead was down to just 1.7 percentage points on average — a net shift of 2 points toward Mr. Romney since the debate.”

“But that calculation potentially underestimates Mr. Romney’s gains since only about two-thirds of the interviews in these polls were conducted after the debate. If Mr. Romney gained 2 points based on two-thirds of the interviews being conducted after the debate, that would imply a 3-point gain for him based on the post-debate interviews alone.”

“I was so excited to see that because I was thinking to myself, finally people are seeing the guy we know. Finally — I mean didn’t you kind of think of Ronald Reagan when you were watching that?”

— Rep. Paul Ryan, quoted by ABC News, on Mitt Romney’s performance in the first presidential debate.

Amy Walter: “Despite earlier predictions by the Romney campaign that they would be competitive in traditionally blue states like Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, they are putting no serious effort into any of them. Moreover, the Paul Ryan pick gave Romney only a short-lived bounce in Wisconsin. The latest polls in the Badger State show Obama with a healthy advantage in the state. This has left Romney has a very narrow path to 270, and no room for error. If Romney loses Ohio and Wisconsin, he would have no choice but to win almost every single other battleground state to win.” 

The Saturday Night Live portrayal of the first presidential debate was dead on.

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Ben Smith: “More of the 2012 cycle’s descents into fantasyland — the unskewing of polls and BLS paranoia most obvious among them — have featured Republicans than Democrats, prompting some on the left to argue that American conservatives have a particular hostility to reality. And certainly, the conservative movement has long nourished more skepticism of the mainstream media and of some forms of government authority than has the left.”

“But there’s probably a simpler explanation for at least some of this: Mitt Romney has spent most of the year losing, and so the Republicans are the ones feeling compelled to re-imagine the polls. That Democrats share, at least, the impulse became clear Wednesday night when a CNN snap poll showed Romney winning overwhelmingly. The liberal twittersphere erupted with skepticism over a sample that, an easy misread suggested, was tilted toward Southern Whites.”

A new Western New England University poll finds Elizabeth Warren (D) is leading Sen. Scott Brown (R) in their U.S. Senate race by five points, 50% to 45%.

“Mitt Romney, his friends often say, is a private man in a public world. But with just one month left until the election, he has calculated that to win the presidency he must do what for years he has been loath to: share intimate stories about his life,” the Washington Post reports.

“So, as the sun set on his rally here Friday night, the Republican nominee, buoyed by his successful turn on the debate stage, for the first time publicly related emotionally powerful anecdotes. Romney told of ministering to the needy in his Mormon church, including a 14-year-old who was dying of leukemia and summoned ‘Brother Romney’ to his bedside. He also spoke of an old friend who ended up a quadriplegic after an accident and came to see Romney recently, the day before he died.”

New York Times: “An adviser said that Mr. Romney decided on his own that he wanted to
tell those stories onstage. But the move was also couched in a broader
campaign strategy to encourage Mr. Romney to reveal a more caring,
personal side of himself, a counter to his reputation as a data-driven
technocrat.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) put out a new ad hammering challenger Todd Akin (R) on the subject of rape victims.

National Journal reports the is airing statewide. It indirectly cites Akin’s comment that women rarely become pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.” The ad’s narrator states that “it’s not what Todd Akin said. It’s what he believes.”

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A Clarus Research Group poll shows Mitt Romney jumped to a small lead over President Obama nationally after Wednesday’s debate, 47% to 46%.

Just before the debate, a similar poll found Obama leading Romney, 49% to 45%.

Nate Silver: “Mitt Romney continues to show improved numbers in polls published since the presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday and has now made clear gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast. The forecast gives him roughly a 20 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, up from about 15 percent before the debate.”

Here are the latest polls from the battleground states, updated as needed:

Colorado: Romney 49%, Obama 46% (Gravis)

Nevada: Obama 49%, Romney 48% (Gravis)

Ohio: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (Wenzel)

Wisconsin: Obama 49%, Romney 47% (Public Policy Polling)

The Financial Times runs a must-read profile of Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign.

“If Romney does lose the election, the turning point might be his [mid-June] departure on his six-state bus tour from the New Hampshire farmhouse. While Romney was holding small rallies, generating positive local news coverage, the Obama machine cranked up a campaign of negative attacks costing tens of millions of dollars. Obama’s air war was devastating. The portrait of Romney as a latter-day robber baron raiding companies and laying off workers at Bain Capital angered many business leaders. But it hit home with its target audience, the middle classes of middle America, in states such as Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin. For many political professionals, Romney’s fatal mistake was not to have advertisements up at the same time, telling his own life story on his own terms.”

The Week rounds up advice for how President Obama can adjust to a newly invigorated Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney’s strong debate performance “has generated $12 million in online contributions, his campaign said, as well as a surge in volunteers and bigger crowds at his events,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Republicans and Democrats say Mr. Romney’s performance before a television audience of some 67 million people bought the GOP nominee a second look from swing voters and may help him improve an image battered by negative ads and his own missteps. The debate also gave Mr. Romney a chance to do something he couldn’t in the primary: trumpet his record of working with Democrats and present himself as a practical deal maker who favors results over ideology.”

Daily Beast: Will Mitt get a major bounce?