There has been much hand-wringing in the last few days about the latest presidential polls. First we had McCain and Obama in a dead-heat and now we have Gallup, CBS and USA Today tracking polls all giving the Republican a definite edge. Given the latest unemployment figures (at six percent, the highest in five years), the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the American tradition of voters punishing the party in power when the economy goes south, you would think our man would be golden.

A few people have even asked me if these polls aren’t skewed by the media either because a) they need a horse race for the sake of ratings & circulation or b) they’re rooting for the status quo, ie entrenched GOP power. I’m no expert on polling, nor do I play one on TV, but I have heard it said, by people who might actually know whereof they speak, that polling is a crossroads now. After the miserable job they did in the last election, pollsters have still not come to grips with the fact that many younger Americans do not use landlines (which is how polling is almost exclusively conducted) and wouldn’t answer a pollster’s call if they did. 

This could be statistically significant given the Dems gains in registering new voters and, as of this writing, our numerical advantage. According to an AP report that appeared today, there are about 42 million registered Democrats and 31 million Republicans nationwide, and we have posted huge gains in key battleground states. A related piece in the Huffington Post makes a convincing case that Gallup et al are drawing on a GOP-heavy sampling of voters. And Republicans love their new cavemom, Sarah Palin. 

Far more disturbing are the polls that show independents moving to McCain. I like to think that they did not have their dial moved by the addition of Palin; how independent are you if you support a ban on abortion and advocate teaching creationism in schools? Of course, I might just be out of touch with the values of middle America, and one man’s spunky hockey-mom is another man’s Big Nurse. But I like to think that the people whose job is tracking the electorate don’t know what they’re talking about this time. Just like they didn’t the last…