Survey Shows Slow News Days Lead To Poll Analysis

The polls keep coming in for the 2008 presidential election, and even though I am an avid believer that polls mean nothing this far out and can't possibly tell you anything, I keep reading them and thinking about them.

USA Today has released a new national poll this week in conjunction with Gallup, and it shows Hillary Clinton re-establishing her lead over Barack Obama. It looks like whatever it was that got Obama tied with Hillary in polls two weeks ago has fled, in that she gained as many he lost from last time. In what can't be happy news for an already disheveled McCain camp, the latest numbers have McCain statistically tied with Thompson.

If you're into looking at aggregates of primary polls and trying to figure out What It All Means, I recommend Wikipedia's collection of Democratic polling for ease of use and readability. It is a page that keeps getting better all the time.

About a week and a half ago, BOR released their monthly presidential poll data, and it shows Hillary Clinton with a lead bordering on commanding. There's still a definite first tier, with Edwards and Obama duking it out for second place, and Richardson moved up a tad to start knocking on the door to double digits. I like the pollster's analysis, which offer the useful information that past Democratic primary voters were polled, and that primary turnout is "usually terrible."

One of the questions in that poll piqued my interest in particular: whether respondents would change their votes if Al Gore got into the race. The uncertainty introduced by a Gore candidacy is considerable and not to be discounted, even though it is getting very very late. It could be comparable with the shakeup Thompson will create. The only difference is that Thompson is almost certainly going to run, and I'm not sure about Gore.

A few notes from blogs: 1) Kos postulates that Clinton's early lead may or may not mean anything by comparing recent polls with data from the 2004 cycle. 2) Joshua Micah Marshall McCain at the excellent Talking Points Memo points to a Newsday story showing that McCain isn't the only person with problems: Giuliani, after failing to attend any regular sessions, received a rather unceremonious removal from the Iraq Study Group. That's gonna be hard to square with his national security credentials, which are already looking battleworn.

And this isn't a poll, necessarily, but if you like pieces that describe days on the campaign trail, Men's Vogue has a good one about Edwards, featuring a little bit of self-deprecating haircut humor.

Update: Forget the GOP retrospective: How about this Rasmussen poll that shows Thompson winning despite the fact that he's not even officially running yet?