Following up on Jerome's post earlier on Quinnipiac University's battleground state polls, it's worth noting that, as Nate Silver observed in his polling update this morning:

Well, Quinnipiac broke its sample into two halves: pre-debate and post-debate. For all intents and purposes, these are two separate surveys, and so that's how I list them.

Quinnipiac's pre-debate polls of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania encompass the time frame from 9/22-26 and their post-debate polls were in the field from 9/27-29. So, I thought it would be interesting to look at the results side by side along with the early September poll that preceded this round of polling.

FLORIDA:

OHIO:

PENNSYLVANIA:

A few things jump out. First of all, Quinnipiac's numbers do appear a bit too good to be true for Obama, and really, they always have. Nate Silver elaborates:

Quinnipiac's polls have shown a slight Democratic lean this cycle -- they've been 1-2 points more favorable to Dems than contemporaneous polls of their states. From what I can tell, their head of polling (Peter Brown) has fairly conservative politics, so I don't know that it can be called a partisan lean. But that is the side that the polls have tended to end up upon nevertheless.

Having said that, there is a clear (if at times dramatic) trend in each state toward Obama: +15 in Florida, +3 in Ohio and +12 in Pennsylvania. In addition, it's pretty clear that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Obama's debate performance did move voters, if only slightly. It hasn't shown up much in the national numbers, but on a state by state basis, he appears to have done himself some good.

One other thing jumps out at me from reading Quinnipiac's analysis of their results and that is the reason for the uptick in Obama's support.

From Florida:

"During the past three weeks, Florida voters lost their faith in Sen. McCain. His net favorability dropped in half and Sen. Obama's almost doubled over the same period. One look at independents shows the massive change. Three weeks ago, McCain had a seven-point edge among Florida independents. Today, Obama leads among that group by 12 points," Brown said.

From Ohio:

"It's easy to see why Sen. McCain is doing so poorly. On September 11, his favorable/unfavorable ratio among Ohio voters was 53 - 34 percent. Now it's just 49 - 40 percent, dropping from a 19-point plus to nine points in just 20 days, while Sen. Obama's ratings have remained as positive as they were. And the economy is the reason. Obama's five-point edge as the best candidate to handle the economy - which is by far the most important issue to voters, especially in economically distressed Ohio - has doubled," Brown said.

From Pennsylvania:

"Pennsylvania is back in its role as the most Democratic swing state in the 2008 election, mainly because voters believe that Sen. Obama will do a better job handling the economy. Three quarters of voters say economic issues, including energy and health care, are the most important in this campaign and Obama wins big on every economy-related question in the poll. Sen. McCain can't win Pennsylvania with just 36 percent of voters saying he is the candidate for the economy," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

So, the economy then, right? We already knew that. Well, there's something else in play here, which this analysis captures:

"Sen. Obama clearly won the debate, voters say. Their opinion of Gov. Sarah Palin has gone south and the Wall Street meltdown has been a dagger to McCain's political heart. Roughly a third of voters, and almost as large a share of the key independent vote, say McCain did more harm than good in trying to resolve the financial crisis, and the share of voters who see the economy as the top issue has risen from roughly half to six in ten."

Because of the perfect storm created by the economic crisis (and John McCain's flailing response to it) as well as the plummeting approval of Sarah Palin, voters seem to be undergoing a major crisis in confidence when it comes to John McCain. Barack Obama, at worst, has presented himself as an acceptable alternative.

This does make me wonder how hard the support for Obama is if it's largely driven by an anti-McCain/Palin sentiment. So, personally, I'm going to heed Mike Podhorze's warning that this race is still extremely volatile and not take these states for granted. Quinnipiac is making FL, OH & PA out to be solid Obama. Until I see evidence to the contrary, they're still toss-ups to me.