Morning Polls

Rasmussen and Gallup trackers both remained the same today (Gallup has Obama up by 4, Rasmussen has Obama up by 1). Gallup is a bit of a surprise to me as Thursday night (which Gallup explicitly stated was a very strong night for Obama) cycled out of today’s results. Research 2000 tracker went from Obama +7 to Obama +6. But the Hotline tracker went from Obama +1 to Obama +5 (sounds like it was a pretty strong night of polling for Obama last night in their poll).

But the big polling story today is one state-level poll. SurveyUSA, which I still consider to be the single most accurate public pollster, has a poll out today that has Obama up by 6 in Virginia. This is on the heels of a poll from PPP over the weekend in North Carolina that had them even in North Carolina. I said over the weekend that if that NC poll was right, then Obama would be up in Virginia. And poof … we have a deadly reading for McCain in Virginia. If McCain loses Virginia, it is really hard to see how he wins the election. Nate Silver currently has Obama as a 59% bet to win Virginia but he has not yet factored in this SurveyUSA poll (he weights their polls heavily based on their strong reputation). I’m sure he’ll discuss this poll in his daily poll update later today and I’m sure he’s going to see it as a significant development. Just to flesh out the argument I’ve made before, if Obama wins all the Kerry states plus Iowa and New Mexico (where he has good leads now), he’ll only need any one out of IN, OH, FL, NC, VA, or CO. A win in VA would likely mean lights out.

A Rasmussen poll in Minnesota has Obama up by 8 there. Other polls have had Minnesota close recently. Another Rasmussen poll in North Carolina has McCain up by 3 there, a result that would be in line with that PPP poll over the weekend.