Today's Polls, 9/6
Although the topline results don't make it obvious, it appears that John McCain had a fairly strong night of polling in the daily tracking polls, which are the only numbers we have to look at today.
The Gallup tracker now shows Barack Obama leading by 2 points, down from 4 a day ago. When I attempt to estimate the daily results from the topline numbers, however, I get the following:
Wednesday: Obama +7.8
Thursday: Obama +2.4
Friday: McCain +4.2
So Obama's numbers are being propped up by a strong night of polling on Wednesday, which will cycle out tomorrow. He also held up relatively well on Thursday following Sarah Palin's speech (note: our estimate of his Thursday numbers has been revised slightly upward from yesterday's figures because of a methodological improvement I made to my tracking poll algorithm). But yesterday, McCain had a good night, most likely leading by somewhere in the range of 4 points. There is a good chance that tomorrow's Gallup numbers will show a tie or a McCain lead.
As for Rasmussen , it actually has Barack Obama gaining a point, and moving into a 3-point lead. However, it still looks like McCain may have had a relatively good night on Friday. My tracking poll algorithm will have more difficulty with the Rasmussen tracker than the Gallup tracker because Rasmussen uses a more complicated weighting procedure (i.e. weighting by party ID), meaning that we're a step further away from seeing "raw" numbers. But with grain of salt, here is what I show:
Wednesday: Obama +4.9
Thursday: Obama +3.8
Friday: Obama +0.3
Once again, I would caution against overinterpreting any of this. Conventions should produce bounces -- they are the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars in free advertising time./snip/
My hunch, as I've stated before, is that whatever numbers McCain winds up with over the weekend, Barack Obama will probably be polling a couple of points ahead of those numbers by the end of the upcoming week.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/And remember: it's not about the popular vote, it's about the electoral vote. Obama is working aggressively in key states, playing offense with confidence.