In the wake of yesterday's debate, one can ignore both the online polls (slanted heavily towards Bernie because his flock is more likely to know how to use them) and the pronouncements of pundits (slanted heavily towards Hillary because they like the way she stayed disciplined.) How the scientific polls change in the days to come (if at all) is interesting, but it will likely fail to capture much of the real story.
Hillary looked good -- calm, confident, human, happy; she was in control, but not too much in control. She gave a good performance -- and note the absence of scare quotes. It would be a great performance if this had been a trial and she just finished up on the witness stand. But this is not that; this is early in the process, more like an early deposition than trial testimony. And her answers will be probed and prodded, stretched and strained, in the weeks and months to come.
Hillary may (or may not) have won the debate; but it wasn't just a debate. And that's the problem for her. Even if it was a good debate performance, it was not so good as a deposition. The test of a deposition is: how well what was said will stand up in the future. Will it withstand careful analysis? Will it crumble in the face of strong cross-examination? Did it create problems for her ability to keep her answers straight (and clear) in the future, as her antagonists repeatedly come back to it? If there's a reason that she (through her devoted follower Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) wants fewer debates, it may be to prevent further interrogation after her first responses largely did their job.
But that won't work. It's too early -- and now her answers are somewhat locked in. To see her problem, compare her performance to Bernie's.