John McCain has run one of the most abysmal presidential campaigns in history, in a toxic atmosphere for his party, while a worldwide financial crisis has proven that everything he says he believes in with all his heart has been proven disastrously wrong.
Yet, unbelievably, he's still in the race. The Gallup daily tracking poll has it down to a 2 point race. (The "expanded" tracking poll, whatever that means, has it down to 7%.) The Washington Post poll shows a slight narrowing from a 10 point to a 7 point Obama lead. GWU/Battleground went from 8 points to 3, DKos from 12 to 6.
To be sure, there are other polls that show the race stable over the past few days--Rasmussen, for example--and Pew and Newsweek still have double digit leads for Obama. (I generally follow Gallup because it's the oldest and has been reliable historically. On the other hand, Pew nailed the 2004 result.)
The individual state polls look much better, but I'm wondering if they trail the national polls slightly. Most national tracking polls use a rolling three-day average, while most state polls are at least a day or two old and don't catch the absolute most recent movement. Will we see a tightening in Pennsylvania in the next few days? Virginia? Florida? Ohio?
Progressive blogs and commentators need to take time out from their premature celebrations and get back to work. This thing is not over.
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