First of all, the national Obama vs. McCain polls are all but meaningless. They might as well report the candidates’ weight. Or their horoscopes. The presidential election isn’t about the aggregate popular vote but about the electoral college.
Second, any one poll (or average of polls) is bound to show some statistical movement one way or another. You’d think that by averaging, it’d be more accurate, but consider that you’re also trying to lump together polls with very different methologies and weightings. Fivethirtyeight.com tries to give each poll an appropriate weight based on how well that pollster has performed in the past, in addition to including older polls at a lesser weight on the assumption that voters are unlikely to change their minds in a leap of 9 points overnight. (Right now his model is having trouble with the Ted Stevens conviction which may represent this very thing.)
This afternoon on MSNBC, Chuck Todd interviewed McCain’s pollster Bill McInturff and asked him just that exact question. There’s no story of it on the MSNBC site, but this analysis piece says some of the same thigns from a different perspective.
The basic argument is, the last major group of undecided voters are white, older, working class – exactly the same group the went for Hillary over Obama in the primaries. In the states where this group matters, Obama may currently be leading in the polls, but he’s below 50%.
As election day draws near, these older, white, working class voters are breaking for McCain, while Obama’s numbers are stagnant.
McInturff also said that newly registered young voters are difficult to poll accurately, which is why various polls show multi-point differences. But, he added, historically new, young voters don’t vote nearly as heavily Democratic as some polls are saying they will this year.
In short, the McCain campaign is hoping to do better with new voters than expected, and hoping Hillary voters will turn to McCain rather than Obama.
If a middle of the road guy earlier was for Obama, then he is now reconsidering, taking one final look in the week before the election to make sure he is the right guy.
If you notice, McCain’s numbers aren’t going up, just Obama’s are coming down.