Reserving your anger for the idiot left wing punditry.-after debate #1-NOTE THIS WAS PRIOR #2

[On the Road]

7. Look at How Republican Pundits Blunted the Effect of the VP Debate

The majority called it a tie or even a Ryan win, and the effect on the polls has been muted.

You could take the line that Obama was presidential, Romney was agitated and rude, and that you don't win a debate by changing and misrepresenting your positions. Instead, Democratic commentators largely concluded that Romney clearly won, making it a bipartisan consensus. Rachel Maddow in particular has gone out of her way to state that the debate was a "clear win" for Romney on every occasion.

Fewer people saw the debate on TV than heard about it on the news the next day, so the effect of the commentary was probably stronger than the actual debate. In my mind, that's what accounted for the outsized effect on the polls (even with the mitigating factors mentioned in the OP).

I understand that Democratic pundits are trying to be even-handed and perhaps deliver a wake-up call to the Obama campaign. But the tide of negativity IMO has been a bigger factor on the polls than the debate itself.