[AaronInCarolina]

I think that all of these post-debate polls, taken immediately after the debate, and particularly on a weekend are less-than random. The proximity to the debate poisons the "randomness" of the sample. For instance, it may well likely change the way people decide to cooperate with the caller, or if the question "Who won the debate?" is asked just prior to "Who will you vote for?" it could act as a "push" poll because it gets the respondent thinking positively about Kerry just prior to going for the big "Who will you vote for?" question.

Normally, outside the influence of the debate results, all of the pollsters take and report their polls at varying times during the week and do not have the immediate biasing influence of their perceptions of the debate. What we have here is a confluence of all pollsters taking their polls at the same time, and producing in actuallity more of a referendum of who won the debate than who people plan to vote for in November. I think once the pollsters get back to polling during normal days and away from the debate, Kerry's temporary bounce will fade.

[jaycost]

I agree with you about the problem of the closeness to the debate skewing the polls. I agree particularly because I think Kerry's victory was purely stylistic, and therefore likely ephemeral.

However, there is no peculiar confluence of polls going on here. Gallup's poll was released Sunday night, which is the night Gallup always releases its poll. ABC News started its daily tracking Monday as planned. The only poll that was fishy, to my mind, was the Newsweek poll.

Gallup's poll for CNN and USA Today has been a weekend poll this campaign season. Weekends in the summer are one thing, weekends in the fall are another. Things get complicated because of football. I wonder whether or not we shall continue to see Gallup as a "pro-Kerry" outlier for the rest of the campaign season.