Ok, Barrack Obama is the only candidate I can think of who has a chance to help us break through the Southern Strategy once and for all.

We've lost election after election since the Repugs started using race in every election. We have the opportunity to stop that and what will do it is turnout.

Why would there be less % of AA Turnout?

Sorry Obama1st- I called you Joseph - I had a brain freeze moment and thought I was talking to Josephcast.

Obama will easily have more than 26% for the black vote this year. Surely, the turnout will be higher this year.

I agree wholeheartedly - based on what happened in Texas during the primary.

People were voting for the first time ever in their lives - I stood next to one when I voted. He was an elderly African American man - he was so excited and proud.

Yeah, lot's of great stories to be told this year! More to come too.

North Carolina peeps- get out and register some Democrats!!

Eric, I know you're looking for news, but would you and the others there please ask yourselves (again, as I assume this is something you struggle with), whether there's much value in reporting polls as news.

They're not. I'm coming to believe that polls are part of a self-fulfilling media loop that keeps circulating bad information just to fill the news hole.

I would like to see an analytical piece that takes off on polls as a macro phenomenon, on how they often use contradictory or questionable sampling techniques, on the wide variation in skill and professional competence of the people behind them, and on the often partisan connections of the organizations.

In other words, pollsters and the new media are using each other, and I'd like to see TPM take a different approach. Turn the 'camera' on the pack, in other words, and show us how the sausage is being made.

I suspect it's a repulsive picture, if you really look at the truth. This would be public service journalism at it's most honorable.

Off topic and semi-old news. I've been tied up, but you gotta love honesty. This link is priceless, why can't an american general be so freaking blunt. It really wasn't rocket science and it cost hundreds of thousands of american and iraqi lives and billions and billions of dollars. Pathetic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/28/rice-adviser-iraq-invasio_n_115398.html

Bingo.

This PPP poll is a Democrat poll, so add 5% to McCain's lead which would equal 8% lead for McCain.

And this was poll was taken durign Obama's trip, so his numbers here are inflated.

To echo others, Chuck Todd this morning (and even Buchannan and the Republican operative-turned-NBC analyst Mike Murphy)all seemed to agree that polling at this stage was useless.

Todd pointed to conversations he's had with Republican operatives who worry that Obama's numbers are being seriously UNDER-sampled, because his most likely voters aren't really paying attention yet, and generally people aren't willing to sit still for a 30-minute interview on the phone anymore.

In other words, sampling "likely" voters at this point is just an exercise in fantasy. Registered voters is a better metric, and even at that, turnout models from 2004 may prove to be wildly low. Obama's got the potential to turn out enormous numbers of new voters.. it's no guarantee, but he's got a much better chance of doing that than McCain. McCain's base is older white voters, who are the main source for all these polls right now.

and generally people aren't willing to sit still for a 30-minute interview on the phone anymore.

Well no shit, Sherlock. Not only that, I'm convinced some people lie to pollsters, just because.

I do not trust polls - not one of them.

Thanks for all the help, John Edwards!

Living in and reporting from Western North Carolina, Obama is the only one here with adds running on TV. I am in the Greenville/Spartanburg (SC)- Asheville (NC) media market. Obama has a strong media presence on the television. Furthermore, Obama has offices open in Asheville, and a strong voter registration drive going here. McCain is nowhere on the scene at all. Given the conservative nature of this disctrict, though Heath Shuler, a conservative democrat is our representative; I am very impressed with the resources that Obama is putting into this district. Even if Obama doesn't win NC, he is definitely going to make sure that McCain has to fight for it.

"Obama has a strong media presence on the television. Furthermore, Obama has offices open in Asheville, and a strong voter registration drive going here. McCain is nowhere on the scene at all."

Excellent news, joelalexshel! Thanks for sharing.

It's all gonna come down to the ground game, folks!

Thanks for all the help, John Edwards

You know, I just read something over at HuffPo that I had not heard one thing about until I read the story- John Edwards has a big problem on his hands, and potentiall, we do - there is a lot of red hot evidence, according to what I read - that he's been having an affair and the story is on the verge of breaking.

Late Update: For his part, Tom Jensen at PPP e-mailed us to say that he believes the figure showing African-Americans making up 26% of the electorate in the 2004 North Carolina exit poll was wrong. He believes the 20% estimate used here is more on target.

In other words, he just blasted his own poll all to hell because it has faulty data.