Everyone is obsessing over the latest poll numbers. Who is right? Who is wrong? Should we put more weight into the Gallup poll or the CBS/NYT poll?
It's an interesting question and it's worth looking at how the polls looked the weekend before the election in 2004 between Kerry and Bush
Here's the list.
The polls were pretty much spot on. Though Fox and ARG both predicted slight Kerry victories, it should be noted that it was within both pollsters margin of error. Everybody else nailed it pretty much spot on with Newsweek being a pro-Bush outlier.
Also worth noting. Neither Bush nor Kerry ever had a double digit lead in any poll with the exception of Kerry in July which was subsequently followed by much smaller lead margins for him. This is quite different from this years election in which Obama has been up either high single digits or double digits fairly consistently.
What to make of all this?
Much like George Bush in 2004, I'd much rather be in Obama's position than John McCain's. With the reports that the youth vote is not turning out, it might be wise to scale down expectations of a big Obama win. You can argue they are just being lazy or waiting until the last minute, but you can only deal in facts. And they aren't showing up in the numbers that many people thought yet. Hopefully that will change. Personally, I doubt it.
Moral of the story: keep workin'. This ain't over yet.