I know some folks are getting anxious about the McCain/Palin race so I thought I'd deliver some good news..

In the first "weekday" polls released since the VP debate (weekend polling almost always favors Democrats, from watching this stuff since 1996), here are the results:

CBS: Obama up 3 (down from 9)
Hotline Tracking Poll: Obama up 2 (down from 7)
Zogby: Obama up 2.4 among likely voters
Democracy Corps (a Democratic Poll): Obama up 3

It should also be noted that a lot of these polls you are seeing don't weight for party identification for the area they are polling (nation as a whole or a state), so they're just randomly polling people and recording as their sample rather than re-weighting for party ID in that state.

For example, even in the fairly favorable CBS # above, it had a 38-28 Dem-Rep advantage, which is ridiculous vs. either 2006 or 2004. Switching that around a bit would give McCain the lead. In fact, the bipartisan Battleground poll had McCain up for quite a while because they did weight, then they switched when other polls were not, and in one day it went from McCain up 2 to Obama up 2. Time will tell to see if weighting is the right thing to do, or if perhaps some of these pollsters weight for party the closer it gets.

Here is a good blog post discussing this: http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/6392

Case in point: Yesterday, Survey USA, a well known pollster, came out with a number in Virginia that showed Obama up 10. Yes, 10. Despite Mason-Dixon, an historically very accurate state pollster that does weight, showing a poll in the same state showing McCain up 3. Obviously both can't be right. Well, in SUSA poll was Dem at 39 and GOP at 30. In 2006 (a bad year for R's, even in VA) the party ID in VA was about 35 GOP and 30 Dem. Obviously that makes a huge difference.

Now why is this occurring? Some think it's a collection of pollsters with mainstream media ties (although Rasmussen is tied to FoxNews, and his are some of the worst) and they're trying to create a "depression" effect to wear us out. Some think they're just buying the "huge Dem swing" effect that Obama may be having. Others think that the polls will start tightening soon as these same pollsters will start weighting as they don't want to lose their reputations. Anecdoctal evidence such as huge turnouts for Palin rallies seems to go against the conventional wisdom that Obama almost has this wrapped up.

Anyway, I feel that polls should be taken with a grain of salt but that overall they do show a trend. Above, you can see that there is a definite trend towards McCain. Even in some state polls that CNN released today (and CNN's state polls were off big time in 2004), McCain is barely down in Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin, which is encouraging.

With a month to go, two debates, and the onslaught that is just starting on Ayers/Rezko, etc, I think the race is as up in the air as it ever was, which is good news particularly given the general feeling against Bush and the love Obama gets from the MSM.