Today's Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll has Obama leading McCain 52-40. All trackers are data from three days to five days prior to posting, with the R2K numbers from today (yesterday's numbers in parentheses) and the other trackers from yesterday (previous day's data). Data is updated as new information becomes available. Daily posting is approximately 7:30 am EDT. LV=likely voter, RV=registered voter.
Nate Silver (fivethirtyeight.com) wrote up a tracking poll primer covering the eight available trackers. It includes sample size, time of publication and quirks, as well as Nate's opinion of the trackers. Recommended.
Obama McCain MoE +/- RV/LV
Today
Research 2000: 52 (52) 40 (40) 3 LV
Reuters/Zogby: 51 (51) 42 (41) 2.9 LV
Rasmussen: 52 (52) 44 (45) 2 LV
Diageo/Hotline: 50 (50) 43 (43) 3.4 LV
Yesterday
Battleground: 49 (49) 46 (45) 3.1 LV Next published Monday
Gallup: 50 (50) 42 (43) 2 RV See also the LV I and LV II numbers
IBD/TIPP: 46 (45) 42 (44) 3.3 LV alternate link
ABC/WaPo: 53 (54) 44 (43) 3 LV
D-corps: 52 (49) 43 (44) 3 LV
Newsweek: 53 (52) 41 (41) 4 LV (Previous data is RV)
On successive individual days in the R2K poll (different than the topline, which is a combined three day sample), Obama was up +10 Wed, +14 Thurs and +11 Friday.
This will be an abbreviated posting, as I am on the road until tomorrow.
Howard Dean's pollster in Salon:
Obama's big lead in the polls is real
Democrats are afraid to believe he's really winning. But a pollster explains why those polls that show a tight race should be treated with skepticism.
and
- There will always be outliers. The IBD-TIPP poll, the one that shows a 1-point margin, is published by Investor's Business Daily and is the product of a firm called the Technometrica Institute of Polling and Politics. The company's tag line, "America's most accurate pollster," derives in part from its claim to have had the most accurate record of all pollsters in 2004. But one indication of potential bias is the fact that among TIPP's current "hot topics" is the question "Are we ready for socialism?" You could argue that the liberal Web site Daily Kos is biased too, and discount its sponsored poll that shows a 10-point Obama lead -- except the Kos poll numbers resemble those in surveys conducted by traditional network powers ABC, NBC, CBS as well as C-SPAN/Reuters. Those all report double-digit Obama margins.
see also WSJ:
Conservatives attack the poll commissioned by the liberal site Daily Kos, saying it skews toward Obama by using a sample that overestimates the turnout of young people, African Americans and Latinos. Del Ali, president of Research 2000, an independent polling firm that conducts the survey, says his research shows those groups will play a major role in this election and should be sufficiently represented in the polling samples. Daily Kos contributing editor Greg Dworkin says the site does not get involved in the poll's content, and posts all available national polls every morning.
as to what the polls say, from Newsweek:
The new poll suggests Obama is consolidating his support across demographic groups. He now leads McCain in every age group, even among voters 65 and older, who choose him over McCain 48 percent to 42 percent. He leads handily among men, 52 percent to 42 percent, and among women, 54 percent to 39 percent. He now leads McCain by 46 percent to 44 percent among working class whites, a dramatic reversal from April, when McCain led him in that group 53 percent to 35 percent.
ABC/WaPo:
Among a recent spate of conservative defections from McCain, one leading Republican was particularly pointed about the impact of Palin's professional background on his decision. Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, and former Solicitor General under Ronald Reagan asked that the McCain-Palin campaign remove his name from several committees in large part because of "the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."
A Post-ABC poll earlier this week reported the Palin pick deeply damaged voters' confidence in the types of decisions McCain would make as president.
Perhaps more fundamentally for Palin's national political future, though, is that voters in the new poll are evenly divided about whether she understands their problems. Three weeks ago, 60 percent said she did; now, it is 50 percent yes, 47 percent no.
More:
Also in today's data , both Obama and John McCain sport high favorability ratings. So too does Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden.
By contrast, ratings for GOP No. 2 Sarah Palin continue to slump. In each Post-ABC poll since the GOP convention, Palin's negatives have gone up among likely voters. Just after the party's nomination convention, 29 percent of likely voters held unfavorable views of Palin; in the new poll that is up to 51 percent.
All of the candidate favorable/unfavorables can be found here.