Today's Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll has Obama leading McCain 50-45. 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: 50 (50) 45 (44) 3 LV
Reuters/Zogby: 50 (49) 43 (44) 2.9 LV
Rasmussen: 51 (50) 46 (47) 2 LV
Diageo/Hotline: 48 (49) 42 (42) 3.4 LV
Battleground: 49 (49) 46 (46) 3.1 LV Still.
Gallup: 50 (51) 42 (42) 2 RV LV II is 51 (51) - 44 (44).
Yesterday
IBD/TIPP: 47 (48) 44 (44) 3.3 LV alternate link
ABC/WaPo: 52 (52) 44 (45) 3 LV
On successive individual days in the R2K poll (different than the topline, which is a combined three day sample), Obama was up +6 Mon, +5 Tues and +5 Wed with a +5 Sun sample rolling off (rounding can take place.) These are starting to look like stable numbers. The Obama video will not be reflected until tomorrow.
Here is the high sensitivity pollster.com tracker chart, followed by the "all polls" chart. Note that there's little difference between the two; following the trackers gives us a good window on the lay of the national landscape:
Seems like real but modest narrowing to me. I think we're (R2K) 5 and holding (Zogby and the others are tightening, then holding) and it's a 5-6 lead nationally. And that's with including all the 2004-modeled polls like IBD/TIPP and Zogby (we choose to highlight Gallup RV, which is similar to Gallup LV II extended, but pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com averages are based on Gallup LV II.)
Mark Blumenthal did a similar independent analysis, with similar conclusions, using Sept-Nov as a time line (see National Trackers: Narrowing? Not Much) rather than October. Both conclusions are based on a reading of all the polls, not just R2K.
This is the R2K party and independent graphs from the internals.
McCain has picked up the low hanging "soft R" fruit. What's he got left? Obama's numbers, as we see in the topline, remain steady.
One of the hot questions coming out of the daily comments is "how will undecideds vote"? For some opinion and perspective let's check with the polling gurus, starting with Charles Franklin:
Bottom line: Undecided and refuse to say voters are estimated to break 50% for McCain and 50% for Obama. As even as it gets. There is no evidence here of a large bias towards McCain that is hidden within the undecided respondents.
Nor is there evidence of a pronounced racial bias among these undecided voters as compared to the public at large. Among the undecided 27% strongly agree and 32% somewhat agree on the "black excuse" item. For the public as a whole 26% and 32% give the corresponding responses.
Here's Nate Silver:
Long story short ... given optimistic assumptions (McCain wins 2/3 of white undecideds, 100 percent of third-party support collapses), the undecided vote is worth a net of about a point for McCain. Given what I'd consider to be more neutral assumptions, there's no particular reason to think that the undecided vote favors him.
Just to show there's no unanimity, Chuck Todd:
Also, McInturff believes something we've argued for some time: Obama's poll number will be his number in a given state; undecided voters will break for McCain.
Nick Panagakis on "persuadables", making the case that the closer we get to the election, the less persuadable the public is (because the less likely a major mind-changing event will happen):
ABC is the only poll that follows up its ""could change mind" question with another that asks chances of doing so...
The table shows that over seven weeks, chance of mind-changing drops from 20% to 9%. Moreover, good chance of doing so drops even faster, from 8% to only 3% overall (2%-3% of Obama voters, 3%-4% of McCain voters, last three reports.). In 2004, ABC polls showed the same "good chance" trend up to a few weeks before the election.
Big picture? That's from AP:
Barack Obama has pulled ahead in enough states to win the 270 electoral votes he needs to gain the White House — and with states to spare — according to an Associated Press analysis that shows he is now moving beyond typical Democratic territory to challenge John McCain on historically GOP turf.
Even if McCain sweeps the six states that are too close to call, he still seemingly won't have enough votes to prevail, according to the analysis, which is based on polls, the candidates' TV spending patterns and interviews with Democratic and Republican strategists. McCain does have a path to victory but it's a steep climb: He needs a sudden shift in voter sentiment that gives him all six toss-up states plus one or two others that now lean toward Obama.
More big picture from David Paleologos, the pollster behind the Suffolk University poll:
The shift among older white men and women to Obama has also become a trust issue. "They've totally lost trust in Republicans and are blaming Republicans, and that's not a surprise." Hand in hand with that loss of trust for Republicans Paleologos sees a gain in trust for Obama. "People are now comfortable with Obama, that's what we're finding out. People now truly trust him."
Finally, in case you were wondering, exit polls incorporate early voting surveys:
Pre-election surveys of early voters have long been conducted by exit polling operations, and the results weighted and adjusted on election night as the live results come in and totals are known. He said the group also conducts a national survey of early voters...
The Value of Exit Polls
Some states will be too close for races to be called on Tuesday, based on exit polls alone, and problems with releases of horse-race figures relying on early exits have been problematic in the past.
While lamenting the fact that so many of us rely too heavily on the exits on election night as an indicator of who will win, Mark Blumenthal, of pollster.com, extolled the treasure trove of information mined from them. It’s a snapshot of "who voted, why they voted, what their demographics are."
And that is what exit polls are for. For more, see How to read exit polls: a primer