The inimitable Gravis Marketing today posted results from a post-debate poll of 1,337 registered Republican voters. The headline news is the result of the trial heat:
"If the election for president were held today, which Republican candidate would you vote for?"
Fiorina 22%
Trump 22%
Rubio 15%
Carson 12%
Cruz 6%
Bush 6%
...
Apart from the facts that (1) it's Gravis and (2) the poll supposedly was conducted entirely on the night of the debate, after the debate ended (at midnight-of-my-soul Eastern), there's an additional huge problem here: the trial heat question came after a long series of questions asking about debate performance (who won? who lost? how did your opinion of X change? was CNN fair?...). Gravis doesn't say whether it explicitly limited the poll to people who had watched the debate, but at least in effect it did.
I won't say this survey result is utterly meaningless — I wouldn't write about it if I thought that — but we'll have to wait for some real data about how the debate and its aftermath affected the Republican electorate at large. Still, if you're wondering what Donald Trump might do if his winning! poll numbers actually went down, here is a faint hint that we might be about to find out. Could Trump get even nastier? Oh boy.