Morning Roundup

With 6 days to go, McCain still hasn't made up any ground in Ohio (a new CNN poll of polls shows) --Obama 50-44. He ain't doin' so good in Florida either.

Yes, as expected the national trackers are tightening (even Kos's daily poll now only shows a 6 point spread, it had been more than 10 a week ago) which is giving me kind of a queasy feeling. And no one likes queasy sassy! But, as Nate says, the state numbers are still way in Obama's favor and that's really all that matters. Then why do the damn national polls!!!!

On that point, WaPo has a good article today on the accuracy of the big polls, particularly going after the McCain campaigns assumption that the race is tighter than it is being reflected in the polls b/c most of the undecideds are white and leaning R. Not so fast, says Nate, provided that were true (and it very well could be) it would only give McCain at most one point (and Nate was being generous).

More interesting stuff about early voting. "More than twelve million voters have already cast ballots in the presidential contest, according to one estimate, and new data from the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll shows these voters breaking Democratic by a wide margin."

Arizona is a toss-up! McCain's up by 2 points. Day-umm.

And early voters numbers are still making me happy. From Gallup

The voter preferences of the group of 1,430 individuals who have already voted and who were interviewed by Gallup between Oct. 17 and Oct. 27 show a 53% to 43% Obama over McCain tilt.

Among the group of those who say they have not yet voted, but will
before Election Day, the skew towards Obama is more pronounced, at 54%
to 40%. By comparison, those who are going to wait to vote on Nov. 4
manifest a narrower 50% to 44% Obama over McCain candidate preference.