Morning Polls

This morning's trackers are the first to include only post-debate interviews. Gallup moves from Obama +10 to Obama +9 but Obama remains at 51%. Rasmussen moves from Obama +5 to Obama +7 and he has hit 52% again in that tracker. R2000 holds steady at Obama +12 and he's at 52% there. The Hotline tracker jumps from Obama +7 to Obama +10 and Obama hits 50% in that poll. The Battleground tracker does not provide updates on the weekend but their tracker yesterday had Obama at +8 and at 51%. There is not much disagreement here. To my memory, this is the first time Obama has been at 50% or higher in ALL of the trackers. Obama is in great shape.

At the state level, things continue to look good. PPP has Obama up by 10 (not a typo) in Colorado. R2000 has Obama up by 5 in Florida. WSOC-TV in North Carolina has McCain up by 2 there so I guess that constitutes a good result for McCain at this point. The Ohio Newspaper Poll (not sure what that is but it seems to have been done by the University of Cincinnati) has McCain up by 2.

By the way, what in the world is John McCain doing in Iowa this morning??? I know he needs to cut into some states Obama is currently winning but Iowa is simply not his best or his 8th best target. He's losing by double digits in every reasonable poll (SurveyUSA put it at 13 just yesterday) and a campaign visit is just not going to change that. This is just utter campaign malpractice. Fine by me though.

A couple of Senate polls are worth noting as well. Elizabeth Dole is in big trouble in North Carolina. Civitas has her down by 3 to Kay Hagan and other polls have shown similar results. Even more surprisingly, Saxby Chambliss is in a dead heat against Democratic challenger Jim Martin in Georgia. Insider Advantage showed them tied yesterday confirming two other polls earlier in the week showing a dead heat there. Democrats are likely to pick up Senate seats in VA, NM, CO, NH, AK, and OR. Add NC and MN (Al Franken - contribute here) to the list and you've got 8. Then add GA, MS, and even KY as possibilities and there is a legitimate chance of a Senate wave. The Democrats have 49 seats in the Senate now and Lieberman and Sanders caucus with them to give them the slim majority. Much is being made of the question of whether Democrats will get to a "working majority" of 60 senators. That is a silly metric to be honest. Even if they get to 60 in the caucus, the task of holding those 60 together on most any controversial matter is much like the task of herding 60 cats in the same direction. This is especially true when you have "maverick" senators in the caucus like Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and Bill Nelson. All of that said, the more Democrats there are, the better.