A virtual tie for President and a debate next week: What will be the result of the debate?

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/presidential-race-virtual-tie-polls-next-weeks-debate-could-change-all?akid=14663.294211.OVLYea&rd=1&src=newsletter1064085&t=4

The presidential election is back where it was before July’s Democratic and Republican Conventions—a virtual tie with nearly a sixth of voters rejecting the two major-party candidates, according to the latest state andnational polls.

But next Monday’s first presidential debate is likely to electrify the race and change its dynamics as many tens of millions tune in. The debate could potentially prompt voters across the political spectrum to reassess their choices in ways not seen since the candidates' nationally televised speeches in this past July’s national political conventions.

“A Clinton-versus-Trump showdown could be the most watched event in U.S. TV history,” writes James Fallows in the Atlantic’s October issue. “In 1960, 36 percent of the population watched the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. The same percentage now would mean 120 million viewers in the United States, plus countless more worldwide.”

But heading into that signpost event, Hillary Clinton has slid from a seven-point post-convention bounce in the nationwide post-convention polls to where shenow has 41 percent nationally, a lead of less than one percent, and lags by one or a few more points in key battleground states like Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada.