10/6 Daily Kos R2K Tracking Poll: Obama 52, McCain 40

Today's Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll has Obama up over McCain 52-40, no change from yesterday. All trackers are data from three 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). LV=likely voter, RV=registered voter.

                 Obama      McCain    MoE +/-   RV/LV
Today
Research 2000:  52 (52)    40 (40)    3         LV
Rasmussen:      52 (51)    44 (44)    2         LV
Battleground:   50 (49)    43 (46)    3.5       LV

Yesterday
Diageo/Hotline: 48 (48)    41 (41)    3.2       LV  (as of yesterday, LV now reported)
Gallup:         50 (50)    43 (42)    2         RV

On successive days in the R2K poll, Obama was up +13 Fri, +13 Sat and +11 Sun (MoE +/- 5.1 for individual days.) There were no new national polls yesterday other than the trackers. Today's polling will be entirely post-VP debate.

Sarah Palin's fav/unfav is now a  - 13 (same as Thursday, Oct. 2, the debate day) and John McCain's is - 5. Joe Biden's fav/unfav moved from +18 on 10/02 to +26 today. The Obama lead went from +11 on 10/2 to +12 today, and Obama gained +5 with women and +3 with independents.

There is no evidence that Sarah Palin did all that well in the VP debate in post-debate polls, and there is no evidence Palin helped McCain in this or other tracking polls. Other national polls are in the field and we will undoubtedly hear more.

The pollster.com average is here from earlier this am (all pollsters included):

We posted these two graphs yesterday, but for those who missed it, they are R2K internals showing the erosion of Mccain's support in 60+ voters and women. This is one of the reasons why Obama leads.

We will take another look at these interesting demo categories next week.

Fivethirtyeight.com's modeling has Obama's best performance to date, with a projected 51.5-47 popular vote, though that translates as an 87% chance to win.

Want to see how 2008 is not 2004 or 2000? Charles Franklin at pollster.com was kind enough to update his graph (post is from August) to show where the races stand relative to each other today. The graph represents the lead each candidate had (positive territory is a Dem lead) using national stimates. Obama is in a much stronger position than either Gore or Kerry was at this point in time.

Also, the generic congressional choice is trending D.

This is not a good year to be a Republican.