Separate survey data shows that political pundits and junkies are likely to overestimate the immediate impact of Clinton’s debate performance. Much of the nation was simply not paying attention. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of 800 Likely Voters nationwide found that just 56% knew that the Democrats were the party with a Presidential debate this week. Thirteen percent (13%) thought it was the GOP’s turn while 31% are not sure.

no one watched the debate.. who the heck would devote 2 hours of their life to watch a debate?

on MSNBC no less where no one watches...

The impact is not immediate in the polls. The impact is delayed and due to the shift in the frames caused by Hillary's poor performance. That's why Hillary's mercenary Mark Penn has the campaign flailing out in response.

As others have pointed out, the impact (if any) remains to be seen, since very few people watched the debate itself.

Of course, the real news coming out of the debate and its aftermath is that the national press has declared open season on Clinton, after spending the last few months setting her up on as high a pedestal as possible. Which, for good or ill, was all very predictable.

Rasmussen Rasmussen Rasmussen.

Why so much Rasmussen at TPM Election Clinton?

Glenn Greenwald obliges:

[T]he Hillary Clinton campaign certainly recognizes that, in light of how our mainstream press covers the presidential campaign, perception of polling success is one of the critical factors in determining how a candidate is discussed -- certainly far more important than the substance of what the candidate is actually advocating. That is why Clinton's campaign is dominated by the execrable pollster Mark Penn, who manages single-handedly to embody, all in one person, everything that is sickly and wrong with our political establishment.

Penn has the perfect long-time (now former) partner in Douglas Schoen, whose purpose in life is to argue that Democrats must accommodate George Bush and his radicalism (by, among other things, embracing Joe Lieberman) -- and repudiate their embarrassing and rabid base -- as much as possible if they want to succeed. One of the most disturbing aspects of a Clinton presidency is that individuals such as Penn and Schoen -- along with the likes of telecom lobbyist Jamie Gorelick and Iraq War cheerleader Mike O'Hanlon -- are highly likely to occupy critical positions of power in a Clinton administration, just as they did in the last Clinton administration.

But Schoen's problems go beyond mere establishment-perpetuating ideology. In light of the importance of perceptions of polling success for the Clinton campaign, Schoen -- ever since he left the Penn firm -- has been holding himself out as an independent polling analyst for Rasmussen Reports and other media venues, concealing his long-standing ties to the Clintons and writing one ostensibly objective analysis after the next which has no purpose other than to depict Clinton's candidacy as an inevitability.

That's why.

It's not taking a side that is the problem. So what if you see both sides.

Obama and Clinton have both been trending up in Iowa on pollster.com, which is the best way to look at the polls.

What Matt Ahrens said. And I apologize for harping on this repeatedly, but I really believe it: TPM Election Central has a distinct bias in choosing which poll stories to highlight. Rasmussen himself cautioned -- in a caveat that Election Central conveniently omitted -- that the movement in the two days in question was too small to have any statistical significance. Take that, coupled with the fact that it's the media consensus narrative of the debates -- which takes days to reveal itself -- and not the debates themselves -- which few people watch -- that becomes a more important driver of public opinion.

So one more plea to Election Central: Post links to poll results all you want, but do not create stories out of them, and if you wish to create stories out of them, include stories about the occasional poll, like the Quinnipiac Poll a few days ago that showed only Obama beating Rudy. What we get is a story on every poll that helps the Mark Penn narrative. Enough already.