Morning Polls

Stay calm as you read the polls over the next few days!

McCain appears to have gotten his bounce (perhaps a slightly bigger one than Obama but we don’t know for sure yet).

This morning, both the Gallup Tracking Poll and the Rasmussen Tracking Poll moved substantially in McCain’s direction. There are several reasons not to let this worry you:

1) Polling on weekends (Friday and Saturday nights) is notoriously sketchy as it is harder to reach some kinds of respondents, etc.

2) The bounce that McCain received (AND the bounce Obama received) will fade. It ALWAYS does.

3) If you read Nate Silver’s piece on the single day effects on the tracking polls, you know that a very good night of polling (Weds. night) just cycled out of both of these samples and that explains a good chunk of McCain’s jump today.

Here’s Nate Silver’s take on where we are:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/patience-poll-watchers.html

The reality is the race is close and it is currently fluid. But something will happen tomorrow or the next day that we haven’t anticipated and will shake up the race again … and again and again.