Rasmussen has a new poll of Virginia showing a tie between Obama and McCain, with McCain leading by one point with leaners included, 48-47%. As previous polls have indicated, the presidential election in this state is a deadlock. New registers and highly increased levels of AA turnout could well prove the difference.

More below.

One of the enduring memes employed by the Republican Party and more recently by McCain himself is the assertion that the surge has worked and that we are finally succeeding in the war in Iraq. Like many here I call bullshit, but with caveats I think are important to the political discourse.

According the Rasmussen poll released today, Obama leads McSame by two, both with and without leaners (42-40 without, 47-45 with).  

Obama does better with Democrats than McCain does with Republicans, 79% versus 76%, respectively.  Even more, Obama is gaining with Democrats will McCain is stagnant with Republicans.

This is wonderful news.  Nevada is one of the new bellweathers.

The latest polls are out, and Obama's now in the lead in Nevada, according to Rasmussen -- Obama 42, McCain 40.

Nevada's five electoral votes went to Bush twice -- and due to the close nature of those contests, Nevada missed opportunities to put Al Gore or John Kerry into the White House.

But the GOP never faced the sort of headwinds they're facing now in Nevada.  The Rasmussen poll's no fluke -- the Silver State's chances of going blue in November are higher than ever.

Today, the New York Times published a front page article about the generally positive feelings toward Barack Obama that Iraqi citizens have expressed to their correspondents. But the headline "Mixed Feelings About Obama And His Troop Proposal," refers to the article's other major contention: That Iraqis have also expressed broad opposition to Obama's plan for a 16 month timetable to withdraw US troops from the country. That surprised me. The last major Iraqi public opinion poll I know of, which was conducted by the BBC and ABC News last fall, found that nearly 50% of Iraqis favored an immediate withdrawal of US troops. That's a much more rapid timetable than Obama is proposing.

According to the latest Reuters poll, in a two way race:
Obama 47
McCain 40

In a four way race
Obama 46
McCain 36
Barr 3
Nader 3

I'm going to try to make this a short diary, particularly because the details come to me second hand and are of a kind that cannot be corroborated (which isn't to say they aren't true, just not things that can be linked to). A few days ago, my mother attended a focus group composed of older white women and geared towards political ads and the positions of the two presidential candidates. Ardent Liberal that she is, she was surprised by some of the responses from her fellow attendees, and left the meeting much more committed to supporting Obama than she was when she went in (she might even start donating sometime soon). I wasn't all too surprised myself, but I thought I would share some of the details of her account here, just to get everyone's opinion on it.

So much for making California competitive. The latest Field Poll, taken July 8-14, included 672 likely voters and has a margin of error of 3.9 percent.

No surprise that Obama's supporters express far more enthusiasm than McCain supporters. He also has 80% support from people who voted for Clinton in the primary.

So McCain wants to contest California? I won't say "bring it on." I will just thank him for trying to make the state competitive, and encourage him to vigorously pursue his efforts there.

The Obama campaign is taking issue with The New York Times this morning over the paper's front-page piece today on the Times poll released last night, critiquing the story for omitting a great deal of the paper's own poll polling data that suggests a different conclusion than the story reached.

Today brings news that voters appear evenly split between Obama and McCain when it comes to their plans for ending the war in Iraq.

I see this as evidence of two distinct problems:

1.  McCain continues to benefit from a sycophantic media willing to extend him an advantage on all matters military, historical misjudgments notwithstanding, and;

2.  Obama has been unable to frame his arguments on Iraq in such a way that draws a stark enough contrast with his opponent, and in such a way that places them in his larger context of hope and change.

This diary focuses on the second problem, as I think the first is largely outside our control.

Can the media actually comprehend that a consistent lead, one that averages somewhere around five points, is not neck and neck?  I'm absolutely flummoxed here.  If Senator Obama beats Senator McCain 52 to 47 that would not be a small victory, as it would probably be a 50+ EV spread.

How wide of a margin does Senator Obama need in these damned polls to get the mainstream media to treat it like a meaningful lead?

Some keep saying that Obama's numbers are like John Kerry's in 2004.
Certainly, statewise they aren't, in particular not in Ohio.

Jonathan Brown and Paul Maslin at Salon are wondering today whether pollsters are undercounting Barack Obama's support by millions of voters because they are failing to survey cellphone-only users, a growing portion of the population, especially the population of young adults most likely to have only cellphones and which showed a strong preference in the primaries and caucuses for the Illinois Senator. (Maslin was Howard Dean's pollster in 2004, and polled for Bill Richardson this year. Brown works for Fairbanks, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, a public opinion research firm.)

Say you want to reach a representative sample of the U.S. electorate for a presidential poll. The Obama-McCain race is relatively close these days, with the Democrat's lead hovering around 5 to 6 points in most surveys. Someone tells you that he's selected a sample that's predominantly under 40 years of age (oops, that one favors Obama); disproportionately renters rather than homeowners (Obama-leaning again); full of college students (sounds like a Starbucks Obama thing to me) - and, for good measure, includes a higher proportion of blacks and Hispanics than the national population does.

At this point you throw up your hands and exclaim: "Why are we concentrating on such a pro-Obama universe? He could be leading by 20 points or more among those people!"

He could. He probably is. But in actuality, the sample I've described is either not being included at all in many national polls or is being undercounted. Why? Because I'm talking about the growing number of American cellphone users who have no other type of phone or who choose to go wireless for the vast majority of their interactive needs. And this election cycle -- for the first, and perhaps only, time -- this group has the chance to render presidential polls "wrong from the start": potentially disguising at least 2 to 3 percentage points of Obama support and maybe more. Heretofore my industry has dismissed the cellphone-only population with a troika of "yes, buts." Yes, they're undercounted, but 1) they don't vote anyway; 2) their numbers are still small; and 3) we can find acceptable substitutes in the land-line population.

And to be honest, there is a fourth, still more powerful rationale that remains unstated: "Yes, they're undercounted, but it's too damn difficult and expensive to reach them."

In 2004, the National Election Pool exit poll found that 7.1 percent of voters were cellphone-only users, a figure the authors think could be twice as high this year.

Pollsters, Brown and Maslin write, don't like to survey cellphone-only users because, by law, they can't automatically dial them, and manually dialing them costs more and takes more time. Moreover, these users tend to be less cooperative. But taking the easy way out could prove problematic.

This year, the increasingly inexcusable failure to count a growing pool of voters could prove mathematically embarrassing. Let's say that with the campaigns' increased focus on the Web, Facebook, phone-texting and other targeted ways to communicate to younger Americans, voter turnout rises and this cellphone-only universe climbs from under 10 percent of the electorate to something closer to 20 percent. If these voters' preference is 60-40 for Obama, they alone will increase his national total by 2 percentage points. And those could easily be conservative projections. In fact, Gallup Poll results from earlier this year (prior to Obama's designation as the presumptive Democratic nominee) had a 4-point swing in favor of Obama once cellphone-only respondents were folded into the overall sample.

If Maslin and Brown are right, pollsters who continue to take the easy path this election year could wake up red-faced on the morning of November 5.

New Research 2000 Missouri poll shows that Obama is up by 5 in this crucial swing state: Obama - 48, McCain - 43.

Most of Obama's edge comes from Missouri voters' opinion that he will be better handling the economy (McSame has a significant edge in "handling terrorism" perception)

There is a very interesting article at Salon today regarding the truth behind the national polls.  Cellphone only households are drastically underrepresented.

This is a poll about the new yorker cover. Just writing this to put 300 characters in the intro. This is a poll about the new yorker cover. Just writing this to put 300 characters in the intro. This is a poll about the new yorker cover. Just writing this to put 300 characters in the intro. This is a poll about the new yorker cover. Just writing this to put 300 characters in the intro.

Back about 4 or 5 years ago when I was beginning grad school and just beginning my conversion to becoming the progressive I am today, I used to watch Fox News (I never, ever watch today- I hate (and that is a strong word, but I use it) them ) and I also sometime around then began to look at www.realclearpolitics.com.

This isn't fun, but it's very important to understand when bad news happens. Poll aggregators now show Obama losing roughly a third of his polling lead. The Rasmussen Tracking Poll out minutes ago shows a 43-43 tie. Let's understand what happened.