I was all ready to break out the gloom and doom earlier today, but suddenly this is looking like a good to very good polling day for President Obama. It also raises an important question: Are right-leaning robo-pollsters, plus Gallup's bizarre Likely Voter screen, creating a false enthusiasm among Romney supporters? We can't know for sure, but there is some strong evidence for it.
The tracking numbers were pretty crummy today. Rasmussen moved a point back to Mitt, giving him a 49-47 lead. IBD/TIPP had the race back as a tie after showing Obama up 2 yesterday. Gallup continues to show down-right bizarre and terrible numbers for Obama. They showed Romney up 52-45 among likely voters, up a point from yesterday's 51-45 lead. The poll of registered voters actually moved a point to Obama, with Mitt holding a 48-47 lead. I just can't buy this whacky Gallup tracker. It's so far afield from other polls. Of course, it should be included in averages, but it seems like it's an outlier. PPP started a new daily tracker today, and their first three-day result shows a 48-48 tie, better than their 4 point Mitt lead in the Daily Kos/SEIU poll released on Tuesday.
The good news for Obama came at the state level. This afternoon, PPP had Obama up 3 in Colorado, a reduction from his previous lead, but still solid in this post-debate climate. A couple of Ohio polls from Rasmussen and Survey USA show Obama maintaining a small lead of 1-3 points.
The best news came this evening courtesy of NBC/WSJ/Marist. They show Obama leading by 8 in Iowa, and by 6 in Wisconsin. He is over 50% in both states. These firms have a Democratic lean this cycle, but these are still excellent numbers for the President. Furthermore, the race in these states is pretty much unchanged from previous polls. There is no universe in which Obama holds these leads in IA and WI and is losing by 7 nationally. Either NBC/WSJ/Marist is wrong, or Gallup is wrong. I'm sure the real answer is somewhere in the middle, but my gut tells me that Gallup is so off the reservation that NBC's polls are slightly more accurate at this point.
Today was looking pretty grim a few hours ago. After one full day of post-debate polling, the trackers hadn't moved, and we didn't have good news to hang our heads on. Things changed with this evening's polls, and hopefully other pollsters start to give us some friendlier numbers as well.