It's only a 45% to 44% margin but that's something in the biggest "pink" state and Mason-Dixon is respected in southern states including Florida.

So, I blogged over at UnionReview and Uniongal that IAFF endorsed Obama.  For those of you who don't know, IAFF endorsed  Mike DeWine in Ohio for Senate despite Sherrod Brown's support among the locals. The IAFF (International Association of Fire Fighters) endorsed Huckabee in the primary (and Dodd). They've even endorsed Christ (yep, Charlie) and Jim Douglas (VT). Sure, they endorsed Kerry, but this endorsement is really different. This time, the endorsement really packed a punch AND, guess who represented Obama to the IAFF at the National Convention, come on guess.  Biden.

Okay, enough giber gabbering, let's talk IAFF and let's hear what they had to say...

How is McCain doing compared to Bush in the battleground states?
Comparing the latest polling data against the results of the 2004
election gives us a perspective.

For stupid head McAss!

They try and try, lies upon lies, but nobody is listening to them...The loud sounds you hear right now are pukes heads exploding all over the country...I hope someone reminds the MSM of the FACT, these numbers don't lie!

Marc Ambinder (whose reporting has been must-read) and Mark Blumenthal offer nuggets from an on-the-record briefing by David Plouffe.

From Ambinder:

Barack Obama's margin among independent swing-voting women and sporadically voting Democrats are two of the main metrics his campaign is closely monitoring, Obama's election manager, David Plouffe, said today.

Plouffe, speaking to reporters, editors and executives of the Atlantic Media company in a throwback conference room in downtown Denver, said that Obama's internal polling suggests that McCain runs a double-digit deficit with this group runs into the double digits in some swing states. "And that's before they know about his position on choice and that he's against equal pay," Plouffe said.

Voters, he said, were treated to an "a ha!" moment last week when McCain couldn't recall the number of houses he owned and suggested that earning $5 million a year would not make a person rich.

"The development on the out of touch argument is an actually critical development of the campaign," he said, because "[s]ome of the voters images of McCain don't jibe with reality."

From Blumenthal, focusing on polling:

Plouffe also emphasized that the internal polling the campaign does is focused on those same 18 states, and that their real concern is not the horse race results but the "data underneath." Later, he added, "the top-line [polling data] doesn't tell you anything." Rather, they focus on who the "true undecideds" are, "how they are going to break," and what messages will best persuade them.

The Gallup Daily tracking poll is apparently a particular sore point. When asked whether they were unhappy that the Biden announcement had not produced a bounce in national polls, Plouffe shot back: "How would we know . . . from the Gallup Daily?" The Gallup Daily is "something we don't pay attention to," he said again.

Communications director Dan Pfieffer later put it more bluntly, expressing unhappiness with the "inordinate focus on bad polling" by the media and also in the routine misinterpretation of sampling noise in the Gallup Daily poll. "The Gallup Daily is the worst thing that's happened in journalism in 20 years," he said.

Meanwhile, the worst thing that's happened in journalism in 20 years has Obama back on top by 1.

As mentioned, interviewing by Gallup on Tuesday night showed a stronger Obama performance, which could augur the beginnings of a bounce for Obama, as is evident more often than not immediately after a candidate's convention. Gallup's official "post-convention bounce" reading on Obama's support will be based on interviewing conducted Friday through Sunday.

Atlantic Media should have more later on the briefing. For example:

"If he does pick Romney, what a duo! It's the greatest job killing machine in the history of American politics. Mitt Romney is an expert on Cayman Island tax shelters. You couldn't have a more out of touch ticket."

That's the headline of a Gallup Poll released today.

Of course, this isn't true.  Obama will cut the taxes of over 95% of American families and only reverse the Bush cuts for the top 1%.  Figure out your own Obama Tax Cut here: http://alchemytoday.com/...

If you're feeling generous, donate your Obama Tax Cut back to the campaign.

Many folks seem worried about the polls this early. The consensus of the national polls seems to be Obama up about 3 with some movement towards McCain. The electoral college, however, shows Obama with a commanding lead over McCain as several other diarists have noted. And since we do not have a national election but a state by state electoral college election, well Obama is doing just fine indeed. To explore this phenomenon I broke down the current state polling averages per Pollster.com and combined those with the 2006 voter turnout for each state to produce a rough poll of likely voters on a state by state basis and generated a guess at what the total vote would look like today if turnout were the same as 2006 (which it won’t be of course). If you like numbers, lots of them below the fold.

I have noticed in reading some Diaries and some comments on Diaries, that there are some among us who are becoming panicky over the state of the Presidential race, buying in to the media hype that this race is close or tied based on the national polls.  While we all know that we elect Presidents based on a majority of electoral votes, not the national popular vote majority, as clearly shown by the Gore 2000 experience, some of us tend to get caught up in the spin.  So before we all get caught up in the Convention hoopla, I thought I would do some electoral college math to better portray where I think this race really stands in terms of what matters, ELECTORAL VOTES.  So join me after the jump for some reassurance.  Its not as bad as you think!

I know this Diary won’t get much attention with all the Convention blogging going on, but I decided to post it anyway to serve as a pre-convention, pre-bump baseline analysis of the race.

Listening to the media babble on about Obama's Clinton problem, polling results, Repugnican attack ads, etc.  Has got me worried about the election.  How can Obama's +12 polling lead turn into a deficit?  After all the negatives the Republicans have to cope with, can Obama really lose this thing?  Well, don't lose hope just yet...

In a word...NOTHING! But you would never think so after hearing all the media blow-hards and looking at the polls. If there was a journalist with any shred of a functioning brain, the question that should be asked is, "What's wrong with this country?"

Every day there is a national poll showing Obama up and another down.  He's up. He's down. He's left. He's right. He's center.  He can't get the white vote. He can't get the woman vote. He can't get the racists.  He cannot close the deal.

All the talking heads are doing their best to keep this race as close as possible and keep the narrative that Obama can't win.  It's our job to show that he can and we start first by ignoring the national polls.  

Why?

Because David Plouffe said so.

Markos wrote this recently.

So I sauntered over to Pollster.com to see what all the hoopla was about, and clicked through to their national polls page.  Then I rolled my eyes when I saw that the poll causing such aneurysms was ....

A Zogby poll.

Some people are frackin' hopeless. Really. At the same time, a new Q-poll has Obama up five, Gallup has him up three (after being tied a couple of days ago), Ras has him up two, as does Bloomberg/Times.

Ok, so we ignore Zogby. But the latest Gallup has McCain leading 46-44.
The lates Ras has a tie 46-46.

I  know, I know..it's a daily tracking poll. But I watch this poll every day and this is the first time since June that McCain has lead by any margin. What's troubling for me is that according to Gallup

An analysis of historical election poll trends by Gallup Poll Managing Editor Jeff Jones shows that recent presidential campaigns have enjoyed a small (though short-lived) bounce from the running mate announcement. This includes a four percentage point bounce for John Kerry in 2004 after selecting John Edwards, a 5-point bounce for Al Gore in 2000 with his announcement of Joe Lieberman, and a 3-point bounce for George W. Bush in 2000 upon choosing Dick Cheney. Bob Dole received an extraordinary 9-point bounce in 1996 after bringing Jack Kemp onto his ticket.

I'm left wondering why.

Flip

The "More of The Same" theme continues to run strong in Barack Obama's ads, and this latest one is no exception. The ad highlights McCain's own admission he doesn't understand economics, and makes full use of the picture of The Embrace.

Hitting McCain on the economy is hitting McCain at his Achilles heel.  A new Gallup poll reveals that voters trust Obama more on the economy, which is the number one issue in the campaign:

PRINCETON, NJ -- As the Democratic National Convention gets underway, voters, by a 52% to 40% margin, believe Barack Obama is better able than John McCain to handle the economy. The economy easily tops the list when voters are asked which of five issues will be most important to their vote for president.

Expect that 12 point margin to grow as voters are educated about how un-educated McCain is on the economy.

A survey USA poll shows Nancy Boyda up 7 points in KS-02.  A look deeper into the poll results show more problems for conservative Republican challenger Lynn Jenkins.

Read about it!

It will be nice to see the electoral maps that rely on the most recent poll flipping to Ohio (get right on that Jerome!). A key take away from this poll:

By a 44-39 percent margin, Florida voters want a Democrat in the White House. Ohio voters want a Democrat 44-35 percent and Pennsylvania voters are seeing blue 50-32 percent.

So Obama has room to grow, dispelling the smearing portrayals of him foisted by the rethugs, such as with the convention appearance last night, will likely help with that effort.

I just saw the MSNBC phone poll and realized something that has been absent from all of the polls regarding the Obama/Biden ticket.  Specifically, the polls ask something along the lines of "Does the Biden pick make you more/less likely to vote for Obama?

This is not the right question for this election, this campaign or this VP.  Biden was not selected to boost Obama.  It is likely that Obama picked Biden to lower McCain.  The distinction is important in the polling because Biden's impact will not produce an immediate bump, rather it should produce a change in the trend.

Ideally, the poll questions in 1 month should ask "Has Biden changed your mind regarding McCain as President?" and "Has Biden raised questions about McCain that you had not considered based upon prior coverage of McCain?"  and "Are you more likely to vote for Obama now that you know more about McCain?"

First, let me apologize from the outset.

OK.  MSNBC has Luke Russert, son of Tim Russert, acting as a poltical consultant and reporter from the convention.  I understand that Tim was much beloved, and I won't get into the issues surrounding him and his reporting.

But I have to ask....really?  Are they THAT desperate to cash in on Russert's good name by using his just-out-of-college son?  

Further, Luke just now cited a poll, an "internet and email poll," which he somehow concluded (on-air) might be more accurate, with Obama in the 50s and McCain in the 30s.

I'm sorry, what?  I'm dying for Obama to win, but do we really need to cite freep-able polls as reality?  Isn't this just the foxification of the news, just from our side?  Does this help our case?  Do we need polls like that to make the case for a dynamic man with great vision vs a tired old one with nothing new to offer us?

Further, they asked a question about who would be best to be "commander and chief."  Whoever wins is all well and good, but the title is "Commander-in-chief."  Again, total fox fodder....if they did that, Olbermann would be all over them.

None of us can afford to be this sloppy.