A lot of folks here seem to take the daily tracking polls (Gallup, etc.) as gospel and track them religiously, seeing every rise and fall as some dramatic change in the Presidential race. For example, yesterday’s CBS News/New York Times survey. I bring up this particular poll because it included one detail normally not seen (at least by me):

About 1 in 4 voters remains uncommitted to either candidate – they are either undecided or favor one candidate but say they could change their mind.

This is probably quite accurate. 20-30% normally are uncommitted until just before the election. Hell, the percentage of those who don’t make up their minds until election day runs in the teens.

Which is the reason that the last week of the campaign is the best time to really saturate the TV with ads, especially the negative ones which can change minds in the short term.

How do they get all those undecided folks to declare who they favor? The pollsters really, really push hard for the respondents to say which candidate they would vote for if the vote was held today. It means nothing, however, as the undecideds could go the other way tomorrow. Tha’s why these polls change so much and so often.

So why do they present daily tracking polls? I can only speculate: supports the concept of the campaign as a horse race and thus keeps people interested, which provides viewers and ad dollars to the media. And, of course, those pollsters have to make a living, too.

And now that I’ve rained all over the daily polls, the poll in question has Obama up 50-41 among likely voters. Have a beer!

(But remember it could all change tomorrow.)