Sometimes,
the polling is stable -- and other times, the polling creates a false
sense of stability. This may be one of those times.
The armada of polling released today generally points toward a fairly
settled race. Obama is not polling quite as strongly as he might have
been before the July 4 holiday, but neither are his numbers in any kind
of freefall. In Ohio, for instance Public Policy Polling
now gives him an 8-point lead -- down from 11 points last month, but
still a result that he'd kill for come Election Day. Likewise, in Georgia and Alaska, Rasmussen has him shedding a point or two -- but still polling more strongly than most Democrats usually do in those states.
And in other states, Obama's numbers have improved a notch. EPIC-MRA
has him 2 points ahead in Michigan -- a weaker result than he's seen in
other polling of the state, but better than in EPIC-MRA's last edition,
when he had trailed by 4 points in May. Likewise in New Hampshire, UNH
has Obama pulling into a 3-point lead -- not the double-digit margin
he's had in the Rasmussen and ARG polls, but an improvement from their
April poll, when he trailed by 6.
It's possible, however, that we're in the midst of some sort of destructive superposition:
the "Obama, no good dirty flip-flopper" wave is waning, and the "Obama,
foreign policy superstar" wave is waxing. The result is not manifest in
most state polling yet, but the Gallup daily tracker shows Obama's numbers rebounding in the past 48 hours.
--Nate Silver