Even though Hurricane Sandy interrupted a lot of polling outfits, there was still plenty of data to chew over on this Tuesday. Overall, a day that pretty much confirms the status quo, which at this point, is still good news for the President.
A few outfits kept tracking polls in the field despite the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Sandy on much of the Eastern Seaboard. I'm not sure how these pollsters can be sure that their data are reliable. My guess is that they weighted their results as if more northeasterners had picked up their phones. Rasmussen remained unchanged at 49-47 Romney. WaPo/ABC moved to Romney 49-48 from a tie yesterday. Reuters-Ipsos continued to show a 48-47 lead for the President. Overall, this pretty much confirms the tied national race.
Two other national polls:
CBS News and the NY Times released a national poll today, showing Obama up by a point, down from a two point Obama lead last week. However, the poll showed Obama leading by 5 points among registered voters. Again, this shows how important turnout is. If the Obama turnout operation can come even close to replicating the 2008 electorate, then Obama will win the popular vote, perhaps solidly. If not, then Mittens will probably win the popular vote.
NPR released a national poll last night showing Romney up 1.
State polls, as is generally the case, were more kind to Obama today. SurveyUSA, a reliable polling outfit, showed Obama up 3 in Ohio, which expands his lead in the RCP average there to 2.1%. That is a higher margin than Romney has in Florida, where SurveyUSA showed the race a tie.
The Democratic firm Graves Insight also released a lot of polls, which many others have noted almost exclusively show 3 point Obama leads, in states like Ohio and Colorado. If Graves' numbers are accurate, then Obama is in better shape than any of us could believe at this point.
Same story today as the last several days: Romney has a tiny national lead, which would be 0.1 in the RCP average if it weren't for that wacky Gallup poll. More importantly, though, Obama is maintaining consistent leads in the states he needs to win, and is staying very close in many states that he does NOT need to win. In a vacuum, I'd rate today's polls higher than a 5, but I think the story of the day is that the status quo is unchanged, which is what a "5" rating represents.