And shine a light on them.

They are lying sacks of shit.

Thanks, Quixote1818

In principle, an average of polls is a fine concept. In practice, this year with Gravis especially, they constitute an artificial reality. Yet if we complain, we'll be accused of cherry-picking. Diabolical.

RCP has Obama up by .2 with an up arrow. So O must really doing even better ...

I think you've pretty well hit the nail on the head, David. The information from RCP should ALWAYS be treated as suspect, until proven otherwise.

Rasmussen, Fox News and Gravis Marketing. Really? That would be "we'll try to be objective," "fairly unbalanced," and "hey Mister, wanna buy a bridge?".

IMHO, the better pollster and analyst out there is Nate Silver. His record is good. And more important, he does not appear to have conflicts of interest and baggage that seem to accompany some of the others.

RCP leaned way right in previous elections, iirc, so I'm not surprised they've shifted back to their original bias. It appears they kept their powder dry until fairly recently in order to appear fair and unbiased until it really counts ... not a bad strategy if you're Karl Rove & Co.

Of course, I tend to pay special attention to your opinions for more than a decade, since you put DUers on the track of sniffing out the real purpose of the DLC. I think you were also the one who pointed to a similar takeover of the left wing major party by corporatists in New Zealand a few years earlier. Was that you?

It's been over a decade already, huh? And consider: I was already old back then when Skinner, EarlG and Elad started gave birth to this community. I'm a fossil now.

The DLC still lives on in many fashions, but it was a sham from the beginning with the sole purpose of tilting Democrats with the lure of money to vote like Republicans. The ghost of the DLC is still around and it really was always around with people who will sell out.

Too many years of reading has left my sight compromised so I can't spend much time with the monitor lighting anymore. Thank you for your kind words. They mean a lot.

hedda_foil, Barack Obama is a good man and so is his wife. They may actually be the best couple to have ever lived in the White House.

According to their polling averages in Ohio, the President is up by 2.1 points. They have Romney with a similar advantage in Florida. The Fox poll had Obama up by 3 in Ohio, and their Florida poll had Romney up by 3.

But then, he also claims that the Iraq war was necessary, and that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction just haven't been found yet. Needless to say, it was a tense evening.

and that carries over into how and when they define charting points and "trends." They widen and narrow with respect to sample size and time-frame to fit their needs. And of course, given that each poll has a slightly different methodology, the averaging of absolute numbers does not garner meaningful information especially since it is not the same sample of poll contributors for any given window.

I do however, get sadistic pleasure watching their chart, watching the way they increase the window size and delay posting a favorable poll for Obama until they can pair it with a less favorable one. The more they cook it the better Obama must be doing, so much so, that one might actually be able to interpret real trends.

Like you, I have watched after a big poll is released, reported by the press, but because the numbers so favor Obama the poll is conspicuous because if its absence. So, I'll wait for days and it never shows up.

RCP has lost all credibility and Democrats should shun them completely. Spread the word.

What a joke!