McCain's taken his best shot
Obama's gone bodysurfing

13 days to the DNC and counting

Now watch as RealClearPolitics includes this in their average but not the Gallup poll released yesterday that had Obama with a 7 point lead, 45-38. Of course, they used the goofy USAToday/Gallup poll that showed McCain up by 4 points among whomever they define as likely voters.

From my quick glance at the numbers, seems that Obama's losses and McCain's gains are primarily among middle class (50-75k) and poor (under 30k) whites. In addition, evangelicals (ie - the GOP base) are coming home to McCain, slowly but surely. Obama also lost 4% of white men while McCain gained 5%. Interstingly, Obama only lost 1% of white men and McCain only gained 2%. Obama losing AA and Hispanic males?

(1) There's no way to tell if the change in the poll numbers is just noise. It's a pretty small change.

(2) National polls are far less meaningful than state polls at this point. Obama is doing a lot of very targeted -- and tough -- advertising in NV and WI, to name just two. He's leading in CO and AK.

(3) Obama's field operations are wide and deep, but their value -- while crucial to winning -- do not show up on polls this far out.

(4) This time four years ago, Kerry had already exhausted his VP and convention bounces.

Joe. Biden.

It seems that 54 represents the best McCain can do in his area of greatest strength; not a good sign when you're opponent has nowhere to go but up.

make that "game-changer"

Will people show some restrain in reporting on these polls?! Obama's lead has not "narrowed" by any statistically significant margin. He dropped one point from the last Pew poll, and McCain gained one point. Technically, that is most accurately dismissed as nothing more than statistical noise, not as any notable change in the contours of the race. Let's not get so hot and heavy over little changes in the polls.

Can somebody tell me....

Which (if any) polls are calling cell phones? It seems to me that a great number of Obama supporters do NOT have land lines, and are being overlooked.

National polls are meaningless.

Obama's in the high 40's, and McCain's in the low 40's. Is there a single poll that has shown anything else?

What is remarkable in this election cycle is not the variation in the polls, but the uniformity in them. Other cycles had much more variability than this.

It's not honest to object to a poll because you don't like the result or you wish it weren't the case.

Is is right to object to the interpretation of a poll because the interpretation, by both Pew and Eric, are simple unsupportable.

A poll is a sample. A sample may or may not reflect the underlying population accurately. Leave aside the nature, order, wording of the questions, the weighting of different population groups, the veracity of answers, etc...

Scientifically I have to take many samples before I have confidence that the mean of those samples is a good estimate of the true population preferences. That's what the margin of error tells you.

Since we don't know the true preferences we have no idea if the trend is up or down. It's pure fiction. But again, fiction is what is being sold here.

Suppose the true preferences are the same as the July poll 47-42. That means both the June and August results could simply be random variation from that accurate estimate, well within the 2.5% sampling margin of error. They are only 1 or 2 points off in either direction.

I would recommend looking at the daily tracking polls the same way. They rarely indicate trends, but instead they show the variation around the mean tendency.

Oh why do I even bother....

obama made a huge mistake by appearing in the white girl ads. this pew poll is just the begining of the collapse of his campaign. mccain has exposed him as the elite and full of himself guy he is. americans get it and will not tolerate it. they want a president who is truly american. his candidacy is over.

"National Race Tightening." I have seen no evidence the national race is tightening. Where is your proof? The polls. They are all about the same and have been for months. McCain is losing. Obama is winning. They are bouncing around a little, but all the bouncing is well within the margin of error. Statistical noise is not proof.

I swear Eric just does this to amuse himself by getting a good exasperated comment thread going. He's a poli sci major and does (or should) know better.

But I'll definitely take exasperated commenters over over handwringing commenters.

Eric, I don't know if the way you report polls is supposed to be a joke, but you are hurting your credibility and this site's as well. I recommend you spend some time at 538.com to get a sense of how to properly analyze polls.