Nate's take, much more at the site I posted the last four paragraphs.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast did show a clear shift toward Mr. Romney on Friday, giving him a 15.1 percent chance of winning the Electoral College — up from 12.9 percent on Thursday.
My subjective view is that, despite the somewhat mixed messages that the polls gave about the magnitude of Mr. Romney’s bounce, this is still too conservative. The forecast model is pretty “smart” about distinguishing random movements in the polls from real ones, and so can be fairly conservative in interpreting the data. However, it does not have the advantage of knowing that the shifts may have come for a good reason — in this case, Mr. Romney’s strong performance in the debate.
So I would bet on Mr. Romney right now given the odds the model offers — but I’d have done so more confidently before the morning’s jobs report.
It’s going to take a few more days for the forecast model to catch up to the news, and I don’t think there’s any alternative but to keep an open mind about the polls for right now.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
DO SOMETHING!
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