Tuesday night’s debate was not Hillary Clinton’s finest moment of the campaign season, but there has been little or no immediate damage to her standing in the national polls. In fact, if anything, support for Clinton has ticked up a bit since she stumbled on an answer to questions about drivers licenses for illegal aliens.

Data from the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that on the two nights following the debate (Wednesday and Thursday) Clinton held a 45% to 18% lead over Barack Obama. For Clinton, that’s an improvement from Monday and Tuesday nights when her lead over Obama had been 40% to 24%.

John Edwards was at 10% on the first two nights and 12% on Wednesday and Thursday. Bill Richardson went from 5% to 7% during the same time frames.

Caution must be used in interpreting these results for several reasons.

First, the sample sizes are very small—447 Likely Primary Voters on the first two nights and 435 on the second two nights. The margin of sampling error for each set of data is +/- 5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. So, Clinton’s gain and Obama’s decline may be nothing more than statistical noise. However, it is fairly safe to conclude that Obama did not immediately gain any ground.

Second, while there was no immediate impact, it is possible that Obama and Edwards will find a way to capitalize on the Clinton stumbles between now and the Iowa caucuses on January 3. In fact, general public awareness of the debate performance may continue to grow on its own over the coming weeks. Additionally, there may be a general election impact as Senator Clinton’s answer supported two enormously unpopular concepts (drivers licenses for illegal immigrants and the comprehensive immigration reform that failed in the Senate).

Third, while there is little or no national fallout from the debate, the impact may be different in early voting state. Clinton currently leads in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Rasmussen Reports will conduct additional polling in these states over the next two weeks.

Separate survey data shows that political pundits and junkies are likely to overestimate the immediate impact of Clinton’s debate performance. Much of the nation was simply not paying attention. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of 800 Likely Voters nationwide found that just 56% knew that the Democrats were the party with a Presidential debate this week. Thirteen percent (13%) thought it was the GOP’s turn while 31% are not sure.

Just 38% could pick immigration from a list of four issues as the topic that caused Clinton to stumble near the end of the debate. Eleven percent (11%) picked the War in Iraq, 5% health care, 4% the economy, 6% “some other topic”, and 36% admitted they didn’t know.

Overall, just 28% of Likely Voters correctly identified the Democrats as the party having a debate and immigration as the issue.

Thirty-four percent (34%) of all Likely Voters say they haven’t watched any of the endless stream of debates this season from either party.

Seventy-four percent (74%) of Likely Voters say that Clinton is at least somewhat likely to be the Democratic nominee this cycle. That includes 39% who say she is Very Likely to win the nomination. A survey of all adults conducted a week ago found that 77% said Clinton was at least somewhat likely to be nominated. Surveys of all adults and likely voters are not directly comparable, but there does not appear to be a significant public reassessment of Clinton’s candidacy at this time.

On the GOP side, 20% say Rudy Giuliani is Very Likely to win the nomination. Another 41% say he is Somewhat Likely to win.

Twenty-three percent (23%) of Republicans and 20% of conservative voters hold this view.

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