The Polls

Good Lord, the polls are weird this race, because we've got a weird race. I'm talking about the Presidential race, here. The polls are all over the place.

This morning, I read about Obama by a landslide. Reuter's/C-Span/Zogby had Obama up by over 10 points. This afternoon, I'm reading that the AP has figures that show the race at just about a dead heat.

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.

Then, there's the IBD/Tipp poll that shows Obama/McCain at 46/42.

Contrary to other polls, some of which show Obama ahead by double digits, the IBD/TIPP Poll shows a sudden tightening of Obama's lead to 3.7 from 6.0. McCain has picked up 3 points in the West and with independents, married women and those with some college. He's also gaining momentum in the suburbs, where he's gone from dead even a week ago to a 20-point lead. Obama padded gains in urban areas and with lower-class households, but he slipped 4 points with parents.

It is a truly volatile race.

I studied polling while I was in college and know all kinds of things about statistics and randomness and bias, and let me tell you, I wouldn't want to do any polling this election. It's just too strange. For starters, we've got a Republican candidate who doesn't energize the base, but the VP choice does energize the base. Lots of Repubs don't trust McCain because of his involvement in the Gang of 14 and in passage of McCain/Fiengold He just doesn't engender a lot of enthusiasm as a Republican because he's pissed us off so thoroughly in the past.

Then there's the Democratic nominee, who's a socialist, but managed to whip Hillary Clinton during the primaries. He pals around with terrorists and he's a product of the Chicago political machine. Oh, did I mention that he's black?

Let's face it, the two parties couldn't have done a worse job of picking two candidates if they'd have done it by lottery. These two guys are caricatures of all that's wrong with how we pick a President. It's like we've collectively lost our minds.

And we wonder why the polls are so screwy?

PawPaw's advice: Go vote. That's the only poll that matters anyway. For myself, I'm voting for Sarah.