Morning Polls

The trackers continue to move in Obama’s direction. I suspect tomorrow we may see this movement finally slow or stop as this is the third day of strong movement towards Obama. But we’ll see. For today, Gallup moved from Obama +2 to Obama +4 and Rasmussen moved from McCain +1 to a tie (Rasmussen is a more stable tracker because they weight by party ID so it moves less and more slowly). CBS/NYTimes has Obama up 5 nationally and a new Quinnipiac national poll has Obama up 4. So what does it all mean?

Simply put, it means Obama wins if the election were today. State polls have begun to reflect these changing tides. A new poll in Indiana has Obama up by 3. Not sure I quite buy that but it is likely very close there. One poll out in Florida yesterday (CNN) has Obama up by 4 when Nader and Barr are included. Again, not sure I buy that (SurveyUSA has McCain up 6 but a National Journal poll has them tied) but Obama is definitely in the mix there disputing the notion from some that Florida was gone. New polls in Ohio and Virginia and Colorado show competitive races in those states while a new poll in New Mexico shows Obama opening up a solid 8-point lead.

Taking all this together, we see a landscape that strongly favors Obama right now. Imagine for a moment it is Election Day and Obama wins every Kerry state and then picks up Iowa and New Mexico (very good bets). At that point, Obama would only have to win any ONE of Indiana, North Carolina (CNN poll shows Obama down by 1), Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, OR Florida. A more complicated path would be to win any two of Nevada, West Virginia, or Montana (which are all within the margin of error in polls yesterday). The point is that McCain is again in the position of trying to thread a needle right now. He HAS to win all of these states or Obama wins.