Slog

Simmer down, nauh.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

The data is three weeks old.

oh so you're worried now?

how disingenuous.

still think Obama should make a big splashy endorsement of gay marriage in california?

Aggregate/national polls are irrelevant and you shouldn't be looking at them. The only thing that matters is electoral votes and individual state results, e.g. www.electoral-vote.com.

National polls like Gallup are completely irrelevant for tracking the election. Remember: Bush *lost* the popular vote but won the electoral vote.

"What, Me Worry?"

I agree, NOW is the time to fully endorse Gay Marriage in California! Yeah, that would be the BEST move he could make right now.

But when you factor in race Obama is really down by 7 points.

WTF? (Renews resolution to ignoring polling data until Nov. 5) BTW-- watched Chris Rock's "Bring the Pain" last night and was terrified by how relevant it was. Black man running for President? Check. OJ Simpson on trial? Check. It's 1996 all over again, y'all... oh, wait, that actually makes me feel better since that's the last time we elected a Democrat to the White House.

I don't agree that national polling is irrelevant. National tracking polls are frequently more current than state-by-state polls, and can give a good indication of the general mood of the country.

That said, I also think it's important not to put too much stock in just one poll. I go to the Real Clear Politics for their RCP daily average, which takes all the most recent polls and, well, averages them together for one, hopefully more reliable number.

@8, people are going to chide you for real clear politics despite the fact their editorial slant has nothign to do with their number crunching.

DAN! How many times do we have to tell you; stop worrying about a single poll! Sheesh!

@4... National polls are NOT irrelevant. The battleground states will ebb and flow along with the national polls, but they are polled much less frequently, thus making those maps outdated.

If you look at electoral-vote.com today, you'll see that they're using polls from the 20th in MN, 21st in VA and FL and 22nd in OH.

As trends emerge, states will drift in the direction of the national polls.

This Gallup poll is an outlier in my opinion.

Read fivethirtyeight.com!

Looking at day by day polls is about as bad as looking at your 401K and other investments day by day.

Dan: Stop that. You should know better.

uh, the national polls have bobbed up and down for weeks.

and, the battleground states are being polled several times a week now.

and, the last Rasmussen poll has Obama ahead in NC, 49 to 47.

and, the averages of all the recent polling in CO, PA and MI have all been good.

The whole 6% race is from ONE poll; I wouldn't put that much faith into it. Why would THAT many people lie in an anonymous survey?

Lame.

you know there is a website for this, right?

http://howisobamadoing.com/

See:

http://millerparkseattle.blogspot.com/2008/09/presidential-election-plausible.html

gallup uses a 3 day rolling average, so a jump for mccain from 44-44-44-46 could very easily mean his actual daily polling numbers were 50% or more!

And the 3-day rolling average also means that we won't see the impact of McCain's "campaign suspension" in these numbers for another day or two either.

Really, Dan - you're such a old hen when it comes to stuff like this. You're not THAT much older than me - really, chill.

I know the election is important, but you can't stay up all night worrying about it like some yappy little Pomerainian.

Remember, it's all about the electoral college.