Polls: Trump ahead in Rasmussen, cuts Clinton's lead in New Hampshire, is back up in Ohio - BUT...

After a solid debate performance, Trump has had an inarguably terrible week. As a result, pickings have been slim for Trump supporters looking for some positive data. There are a couple of bright spots out there, but be warned. Each of these polls have problems that indicate all may not be as it seems... First up, we had news from Rasmussen that Trump was once again back on top.

The full results from Sunday night’s debate are in, and Donald Trump has come from behind to take the lead over Hillary Clinton.

The latest Rasmussen Reports White House Watch national telephone and online survey shows Trump with 43% support among Likely U.S. Voters to Clinton’s 41%. Yesterday, Clinton still held a four-point 43% to 39% lead over Trump, but that was down from five points on Tuesday and her biggest lead ever of seven points on Monday.

That's nice, but can we really trust Rasmussen these days? They seem to consistently favor Republicans by several points, and infamously had Romney winning the 2012 Election right up to the end. If you're leaning on Rasmussen, you're resting on a very shaky foundation. A little more solid is the following data from a WBUR poll of New Hampshire:

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by just 3 points in New Hampshire, according to a new poll that shows the race is tightening there despite last week's video showing Trump making lewd remarks about women. According to the WBUR poll, Clinton leads Trump 41-38, and Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson gets 11 percent of the vote. In the same poll more than two weeks ago, Clinton held a 7 point advantage. While her support has remained relatively steady, Trump's support that has risen from 35 to 38 percent.

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The problem here? The WBUR poll is pretty much the only poll that didn't show Trump taking a hit after the Billy Bush tape hit. That, to me, says it was probably an outlier. Yes, it could be the only one that's right, but that kind of thinking leads you into the Rasmussen-land described above. Probably the best news for Trump comes from the NBC/WSJ poll that shows him one point ahead in Ohio:

In Ohio, Trump holds a one-point advantage over Clinton among likely voters, 42 percent to 41 percent, with Johnson at 9 percent and Stein at 4 percent, although that margin is inside the poll’s margin of error.

That's nice, but it brings us to the real problem with all of these polls. Each of them were conducted somewhere between October 10 & 13. That means they all reflect "the tape" and his stronger debate showing, but contain little of the fallout from the groping accusations. It will take a few more days before the polls bake that into the data, so these numbers may be a bit pie-in-the sky. The fact is, Trump is probably around 5-6 points behind Clinton. That's not an insurmountable figure, but you have to know that every time it looks like Trump is going to close the gap, team Hillary will scare up another accuser. If it looks like the Wikileaks releases are hurting her, one of her media allies will drop another "recently discovered" bit of footage. At this point, it's a war of attrition. The problem is, it's tough to win that kind of fight when you're already behind the electoral 8-Ball.