How nice of you to think of us before your exit, Steve! Of course, you know, there will be freaking out. It's the nature of the beast. But, cooler heads should keep Steve's cautionary perspective in mind here - Convention's do bring about a bounce. They are temporal - they go as quickly as they come. I expect Obama to come out w/about a 2 point lead by the middle of next week.

*sigh* I keep getting a "server error" whenever I post.

Save the tomatoes!

NC Steve - you da man. Be safe up there!!

I saw Rick James a few years ago and you sir are nor Rick James!!! You're alive... :-)

HockeyMom-mentum!

Thanks for the kind wishes, all. Just to be clear, my town is in no danger of getting anything other than a much-needed boost to the water table. However, the the weather alarmists on TV are warning of 25 mph gusts. I've got to decide soon whether to pick the green ones or let the take their chances in the wind.

you're a sane, steady voice. i don't usually let polls bother me, but after watching the RNC and just how cynical and their willingness to do anything(anything) to win, i'm feeling the most depressed and pessimistic about this campaign than i have at any time in the last 20 months...i don't know why...maybe i'm just burned out and need a break, but for the first time, i can actually envision a scenario in which the best candidate doesn't win.

and it scares me to death.

Just brought in all my moveable plants, recycling bins, and other high-winds moveables. While I don't expect too much from Hanna where we are, I've learned that it's always best to be prepared. And while I'm hoping to avoid any major flooding, we do desperately need rain.

The specter of Ike right behind Hanna is reminding me of the 1-2 punch of Dennis and Floyd in '99. I was 9+ months pregnant at the time, and that was quite an exciting couple of weeks. I hope we don't have anything close to that coming, because I think all the FEMA prep went into looking good for Gustav, and I don't really want to find out if they've "learned the lessons" they claim to have.

On that note, Gustav hasn't "passed" just because the storm is over. There are still hundreds of thousands without electricity, people sleeping in cars, people without access to food and clean water, etc. The news cycles move on, but folks down there still need our help. So following on Steve's good advice, I would like to make a request:

in lieu of one polling freak-out or Palin post this weekend, hows about subbing a $5 donation to hurricane relief? It will probably make you feel better and help more. and I know it works, b/c I just resisted the urge to snark on another thread by doing this myself. :-)

Good advice, Steve, but I'm sure you know the sheep will be as easily startled as ever.

I have felt a lot better since I've been watching electoralvote, myself. I am still stunned that North Dakota is anywhere NEAR the D column!

I think it's bad news for McSame already!

What a great combination of flavors! Thanks for sharing that, KateO.

O Formerly, your calming voice of reason and perspective is so needed on this site.

Thanks.

BTW - looks like we can think about getting our freak on :-)

Can someone explain this to me - how can the polls be close when this is the situation:

Since the last federal election in 2006, volunteers like Graham combined with the enthusiasm generated by the Obama-Clinton struggle to add more than 2 million Democrats to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states.

How? The polls make no sense in light of this. None. I don't get it.

Don't see a bounce. I guess these hatefests don't do it any more...

Help, I'm freaking out! Obama's lead is down to 2 on Gallup today. Sadly it would appear that at least in term of Gallup, Obama's bounce has largely evaporated. If NCSteve is correct, this could look better by the middle of next week. I'm just hoping that the shine wears off of this frightening Sarah Palin as the undecideds learn more.

Your assumptions about weekend polling are incorrect. The Gallup tracker includes cellphones, so young voters can be reached wherever they are.

The age group least likely to participate in a poll after being reached by pollsters is the over-60 crowd.

Regardless of how difficult it is for a pollster to reach a certain demographic, the pollster keeps trying till enough of them participate or else weights the poll sample to correspond to the percentages of voters in each demo group.

More Joe Klein, giving them hell!!

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/09/no_actually_its_that_the_econo.html

Rational as ever, my friend. Thank you. =)

Good luck with those tomatoes, NC Steve - it is ALWAYS a pleasure to read your posts.

More Joe Klein, giving them hell!!

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/09/no_actually_its_that_the_econo.html

OTOH, if you'd really LIKE to freak out just a little bit, this will help, from Nate Silver:

Although the topline results don't make it obvious, it appears that John McCain had a fairly strong night of polling in the daily tracking polls, which are the only numbers we have to look at today.

The Gallup tracker now shows Barack Obama leading by 2 points, down from 4 a day ago. When I attempt to estimate the daily results from the topline numbers, however, I get the following:

Wednesday: Obama +7.8
Thursday: Obama +2.4
Friday: McCain +4.2

So Obama's numbers are being propped up by a strong night of polling on Wednesday, which will cycle out tomorrow. He also held up relatively well on Thursday following Sarah Palin's speech (note: our estimate of his Thursday numbers has been revised slightly upward from yesterday's figures because of a methodological improvement I made to my tracking poll algorithm). But yesterday, McCain had a good night, most likely leading by somewhere in the range of 4 points. There is a good chance that tomorrow's Gallup numbers will show a tie or a McCain lead.

As for Rasmussen , it actually has Barack Obama gaining a point, and moving into a 3-point lead. However, it still looks like McCain may have had a relatively good night on Friday. My tracking poll algorithm will have more difficulty with the Rasmussen tracker than the Gallup tracker because Rasmussen uses a more complicated weighting procedure (i.e. weighting by party ID), meaning that we're a step further away from seeing "raw" numbers. But with grain of salt, here is what I show:

Wednesday: Obama +4.9
Thursday: Obama +3.8
Friday: Obama +0.3

Once again, I would caution against overinterpreting any of this. Conventions should produce bounces -- they are the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars in free advertising time. What we don't know is how to contextualize these bounces. An average convention bounce is about 6 points, but we don't know how the Democratic and Republican conventions interact with one another, particularly as it affects the timing of the respective bounces. Moreover, Fridays (and Saturdays) are tough nights to poll. My hunch, as I've stated before, is that whatever numbers McCain winds up with over the weekend, Barack Obama will probably be polling a couple of points ahead of those numbers by the end of the upcoming week.