Kerry Pulls Into Electoral Lead After Pulling In Florida

Thirteen new polls today and since ARG is going to release 30 new polls today I will have even more tomorrow. Before getting into today's data, a small technical note. Since there are so many overlapping polls now, something that didn't happen before, questions like should a Sept. 14-16 poll replace a Sept. 12-18 poll are starting to occur. To be consistent, I have formulated a set of rules described below. As a consequence of these rules, five of the new Mason-Dixon polls are not being included (MI, MO, OR, PA, and WI), because they do not meet the new criteria for replacing an existing poll. Only one of these changes who is ahead (WI) but since ARG is releasing a new poll for Wisconsin today, having one poll be in dispute for one day is a small price to pay for a clear and consistent set of rules about which poll is most recent.

The big news today is that Kerry is once again ahead in the electoral college by dint of his edging ahead in Florida (49% to 48%) and New Jersey (47% to 43% among RVs). However, these gains were partially offset by loses in Iowa and New Mexico. In Iowa, a new Gallup poll puts Bush ahead 48% to 43%. In New Mexico. a new Mason-Dixon poll taken Sep. 15-16 puts Bush ahead 47% to 43%, compared to Zogby's Sept. 13-17 poll showing a Kerry lead of 54% to 42%. That is a 15% switch in a couple of days, far outside the MoE. Clearly there are serious methodological issues here. These issues far overshadow the MoE, which is why I don't include the MoE in the spreadsheets. If one pollster is mostly sampling Democrats and another is mostly sampling Republicans, the MoE doesn't mean a lot.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Got the momentum, baby! YAH!

so, Joe!?