The New Republic

Perhaps the CBS poll that shows Barack Obama with a 14-point lead among likely voters (12 points when third-party candidates are included) is a modest outlier. But if so, John McCain has more and more outliers that he has to explain away these days. There are now no fewer than seven current national polls that show Obama with a double-digit advantage: Newsweek (+11), ABC/Post (+10), Democracy Corps (+10), Research 2000 READ MORE >>

It's hard to tell these days whether the McCain campaign is coming or going; they have thus far defied our prediction that they would revert to a kinder, gentler tone. But the polls continue to break in pretty much just one direction, and it isn't in READ MORE >>

It was Tom Bradley's 1982 race for governor of California, in which he lost to George Deukmejian in spite of leading in the public polls, that gave the Bradley Effect its name. But now Lance Tarrance, the pollster for Bradley in that race, has an article up at RCP suggesting that the Bradley Effect was merely a case of bad polling -- and that his campaign's internals had shown a dead heat: READ MORE >>

Presently, we show John McCain with a 5.9 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, a figure that will seem implausibly low to many of you. But here's a bit of context from John Harwood at the New York Times: READ MORE >>

I've been fighting a bit of a cold on and off for the past couple of weeks, and so I took most of the day to rest and recover and to check a couple of assumptions in our model. But before we get ahead of ourselves, let's look at what we have to work with on a relatively READ MORE >>

The political industry's day of rest is Saturday, not Sunday, when the morning talk shows can make news, and campaigns try and jockey to lead the news cycle in the week ahead. As such, it tends to be the slowest day of the week for polling, and today is no exception:There are really only two items of any significance here. Firstly, Obama continues to hold or slightly improve his position in the national tracking polls. But secondly, McCain got a strong result READ MORE >>

With 25 days to go until the election, Barack Obama is presently at his all-time highs in four of the six national tracking polls (Research 2000, Battleground, Hotline and Zogby) and is just one point off his high in Gallup. He has emerged with clear leads in both Florida and Ohio, where there are several polls out today. He is blowing McCain out in most polls of Pennsylvania and Michigan, and is making states like READ MORE >>

This is pretty interesting: [Norm] Coleman told reporters that he would not be appearing at a planned rally with McCain this afternoon. Could it be McCain's sliding polling numbers in Minnesota? His attacks on Obama? Coleman said he needs the time to work on suspending his own negative ads."Today," he said, "people need hope and a more positive campaign is a start." READ MORE >>

Bill Ayers' Wikipedia entry has been accessed between 49,500 and 96,000 times over each of the past five days, as the McCain campaign has sought to stress the linkages between Barack Obama and the former Weather Underground frontman. This is a high figure; Jeremiah Wright, at his READ MORE >>

The idea of Barack Obama winning North Carolina or perhaps Indiana, I think we have gotten accustomed to. But Obama winning ... West Virginia, a state where he got barely a quarter of the vote in the Democratic primary?That's what American Research Group says; in fact, it gives Obama a rather large, 8-point lead in the Mountaineer State. I'd have to say that I'm very, very skeptical of this one until I see it confirmed by another polling agency; this is READ MORE >>