Pollster.com

Possible to see the graphs from just August forward?

Looking at the slope of the lines, the red states certainly have the greatest increase since the convention, and it does look like movement in the blue & swing states -- but will the bounce/bubble burst?

I know that this is not the point that the article is trying to make, but why are the red states redder in color? They go from pink to deep maroon, while the lean dem states go from powder blue, to a slightly darker sky blue.

Shouldn't they be a strong navy?

The geographical dominance of the red states is daunting enough when looking at poll maps, their color needn't be overpowering the strong dem states as well.

"and Montana was listed by the Obama campaign as a target state."

WOW... why even include that statement in what is suppose to be a statistical look at the numbers??? Because Obama's campaign has aggressive hopes for their candidate shouldn't influence the state-by-state tallies of the actual polling numbers.

Have you picked up on the latest data from Minnesota?

See here: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/15/cnn-electoral-map-minnesota-now-a-toss-up/

most polls were coming out during the peak of bounce.

I agree for now there is little gain for Maccain. But we have to see one week later since the bounce is coming down from 2-3 days ago.

DPartridge is correct. Montana has no business listed as a tossup state. That's more evidence that the Obama camp bamboozled the media and pollsters all year. I've been trying to steal Montana at bargain rate but it was never available. Current trading price is 80-20.

The way this is playing out, it's more and more obvious that Hillary expanded the playing field more than Obama did. Arkansas and West Virginia would be legitimately in play with Hillary. Meanwhile, Obama is wasting time and resources with pipe dreams like Georgia, North Carolina, both Dakotas, Montana and Indiana.

Charles,

I would like to see something authorative written on Rasmussen's 2 recent ID weighting changes and what their effect actually is Like for Like. For example we get 5 battleground reports each Monday. The first Monday was the 8th of September with polling conducted immediately after the Republican Convention.

Yesterday the 15th with an ID weight change we have new polls that apparently have a further shift to McCain in line with the ID further weighting change from Democratic and Independent to Republican, save for Ohio which seemed border line outlier at the time.

Has anyone written authoratively on it?

At first I had the same thoughts as you, Thoughtful, (no pun intended), but when I compared the 5 battlestates polls and their party crosstabs with last weeks, there didn't seem to be a uniform change in party weighting. While I cannot be exact, I would guess, compared to last week that CO the weighting was identical , FL maybe down a point in Ds (or it might just be rounding) but since Rasmussen did have the biggest party id advantage beforehand among pollsters in FL this does not seem to be too unreasonable. PA and OH had some huge movement in the independent votes (40+% swings but in opposite directions!) which makes it difficult to be precise about these states. But I would guess PA had no change in weighting (if anything it have been a greater margin to the democrats), OH probably did have a small movement in the weighting, perhaps +1R, -1D. The alternative is Rasmussen is weighing independents at 10-12% in OH. VA almost certainly had a weighting change. The poll a week ago had democrats with a 1-2% advantage, this week it was reversed with a 1-2% republican advantage. (So if rasmussen had weighting the VA poll the same this week as he had last then Obama would have been up a 2-3 points)

I fairly sure that Rasmussen is not trying to 'rig' his results and he probably feels that the changes in party-id numbers are a accurate reflection of the population, but it would be helpful if he stated what he is doing, especially in terms of trying to calculate trends.

What's interesting about Axelrod's response to McCain's bump in the polls is his qualification that these are in "red states," and the implication being that Obama was not going to win these anyways.

Now during the primaries, wasn't the Obama campaign's message that Obama was the stronger candidate as he was winning over Republicans ("Obamacans") in open-primary red states that Democrats rarely compete in?

@Gary

Great post. Why hasn't anyone called out the Obama campaign for that.

thoughtful, I did my own back-of-the-envelope math to calculate Rasmussen's party weighting in its two most recent Ohio polls, and it's interesting.

The previous Rasmussen Ohio poll had McCain up 51-44, and I found, dejectedly as a strong Obama supporter, that McCain's edge came DESPITE a STRONG Dem ID advantage of 41D-35R-24I.

But the current Ras Ohio poll with a small 48-45 McCain edge actually has a much stronger Republican representation, with a 40D-38R-22I breakdown. Obama gained in spite of fewer Dems and more Rethugs.

Why the stunning result?

Answer: Rasmussen stunningly had independents moving shockingly from a 21-point McCain edge to a 21-point Obama edge.

This kind of volatility makes little sense, but to the extent one CAN make sense of it I would hypothesize that some conservative independents now identify, or perhaps "re-identify" after having been disaffected, with the GOP, while some previously identifying Dems now are liberal-leaning self-identifying indies. That could explain some of the independent movement toward Obama, the rest perhaps explained by a combination of real movement and statistical noise coming from a subsample with high margin of error.

" in spite of fewer Dems and more Rethugs."

why , rasmussen has less bias than you.

DCCyclone: Your breakdown makes much more sense. I was trying to reduce the number of indi's to a minimium so at least most of the movement from 26 point advantage to McCain to a 21 point advantage to Obama could be put down to sampling error rather than an unrealistic huge movement in the preferences of indi's, especially with next door PA's indi's doing the exact opposite by a 40 point margin. Ah well, I suppose if you do enough polls you do get these oddities.

The Obama campaign has bought into the Howard Dean dream of contending in all 50 states. It doesn't work that way. It is just a dream. The states will turn red or blue depending on the mood or times the country is going through. California was once red. Who could imagine that today.

I think we should rename this to "McCain's flat-lining is not limited to red states"