How Much Did Wednesday’s Debate Help Romney?

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Did Obama’s poor debate performance cause his poll standing to crater? There’s good reason to doubt this. Obama’s drop has been large enough that, almost literally, the debate could have been the cause only if every single undecided voter watching on Wednesday had decided overnight to vote for Romney. Historically, there’s simply no precedent for this. Presidential debates typically have only a modest impact on campaigns, and it’s not as if Obama staggered onto the stage shitfaced or something.

But if you’re not convinced, take a look instead at the Pollster poll average below. I’ve labeled it for easy reference. Between September 27 and October 3 — before the debate had an impact — Romney gained 3.5 points on Obama. Between October 3 and October 8 he gained another 0.4 points. In other words, nearly all of his gain came before the debate, not after.

Other poll averages I’ve looked at show different trajectories. RCP shows Romney gaining ground starting at the end of September, but (unlike Pollster) shows that he gained more ground after the debate than before. Nate Silver shows all of Romney’s gain coming after the debate, but his model also shows a fairly smallish gain. There’s no unqualified answer here. Still, the balance of the evidence suggests that Romney was bouncing back from his terrible September well before last Wednesday, and has gained modestly but not titanically since then. There’s obviously been some mean reversion to the fundamentals here, and it’s not yet clear just how big an impact the debate has really had. We’ll know more over the next few days.

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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