Hurricane Sandy could affect polling in the final week

>>> a new poll out this morning a longer-term analysis supports what the instant polls told us president obama was the clear winner in the third and final debate this week. he won over viewers 56% to 33% it wasn't even close but, of course, you remember mitt romney won the first debate. the editor in chief of the gallup poll , frank newport is back with us again. good to see you.

>> good morning.

>> when you ask people their overall impressions, they say slightly more to mitt romney . what's the takeaway from the debates?

>> basically even, 46-44, so this is very specific now. think about all three debates and people put it together and it breaks even. so, the takeaway is what we would call a primacy effect. how is that for a nice word?

>> what does it mean?

>> the first debate out of the chute seems to say that it's a more important debate.

>> maybe a wash.

>> you about it was not strong for one candidate than the other even though they differentially performed.

>> mitt romney has a three-point lead among likely voters but it was as high as seven a week ago. so, again, here we are 11 days out from the election, how close is this race?

>> it's quite close, but as you can see here and i think other polls are showing the same thing that there is an edge to mitt romney in the popular national vote, now, this is within the margin of error but nevertheless you'd rather be on top than below. what's interesting, chris, it raises the possibility at any rate of a split election where the electoral college can go to one candidate and the popular to another win.

>> there may never be another race that looks this close for the final two weekends, which begs the question, you know history, what could move these numbers in any marked way?

>> that's a good question. will there be october surprises. there are no more specific events, the third debate was the last scheduled event and they are campaigning frankically 15 hours a day both candidates. there's a storm coming and by the time election day comes around, it will be gone, will the president be able to be presidential and romney could go to the damage, could that have an impact, we don't know. but there's a lot of unknowns.

>> they may have to give up their schedules in the battleground states . you guys might have to give up polling.

>> it affects us because if a sizable amount of the country can't communicate, power is out or disrupted, we might have to stop polling when the days that the storm hits unfortunately.

>> it's all about turnout and you have interesting new race on the razor thin race on key demographic groups. tell us what you found.

>> this is comparing our fund -- not exit polls , but this is '08 our last estimate of what the electorate looked like, this won't be election day , but what we're finding out now, very little change by gender or ethnicity, but we are seeing a phenomena where this was the highest democratic identifications we've seen in recent decades in 2008 . obama had really pushed people over the democratic party and now we're much more even on party identification overall, so that's probably one of the most significant changes we've seen compared to '08.

>> gallup's frank newport, always great to have you in. thank