Every day, media outlets report the latest horse-race polls from Gallup, Rasmussen, and others. What they don't say is how little it means that Obama leads McCain 47-43% in national polls, because we don't elect presidents that way. The popular vote -- as Al Gore well knows -- doesn't decide the race.
To be responsible, pollsters and the news media should only be reporting those percentages on a state-by-state basis, and concentrate more on what voter responses mean to the electoral college map. This site does just that, and has Obama leading McCain 289-213, more than enough to get him elected.
Speaking of pollsters, Paul Maslin and Jonathan Brown wonder if their industry is under-estimating support for Obama because they only poll people with listed landline numbers, and many of his supporters are younger, cell-phone-only users.Labels: politics