POLL WATCHING: I know you are, but what am I?

Has this election sucked away your life? You are not alone. Believe me, you're not alone. At the Wall Street Journal Ellen Gamerman consider the national pastime of poll-watching.... "The proliferation of sites such as Pollster.com, RealClearPolitics.com and FiveThirtyEight.com are feeding the poll-watchers' habits -- offering up-to-the-minute information on the race by compiling dozens of polls, posting electoral-vote maps and inviting readers to comment. At least 10 new national polls and 15 to 30 new state polls are released every day, says Mark Blumenthal, editor and publisher of Pollster.com. RealClearPolitics.com received seven million unique users last month, thanks in part to polls moving 'out of the political-junkie circle and into the public consciousness,' says John McIntyre, the site's president and co-founder. Greg Sargent, who edits the election blog at the political site TalkingPointsMemo.com, says citizen poll-watchers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. The site recently received more than three-dozen emails from readers who thought it had included a wrong number from Gallup in its weighted average of five daily tracking polls. In fact, the site had switched to a number based on likely voters, not registered voters -- changing the composite poll by 0.1%. 'It was an interesting moment,' Mr. Sargent says."

Obviously to go by this article, I'm not wasting ENOUGH time on these things. I need to spend MUCH more time on the polling websites. By the way, did you know that on Pollster.com's graphs, you can play with the "tools" on each graph? Take Florida for instance. Don't like these automated "voice recording" polls in which pollees never talk to a live person? Click on the "Tools" link at the bottom of the graph and then click "Filter." You can uncheck the "IVR automated phone" box and *Poof*! all the auto-polls are taken out. Much better. You can even click off specific polls that you don't like. Like Fox. Or Zogby.

Republicans are sobbing into their beers. Former Bush-speechwriter David Frum says glumly: "I could pile up the poll numbers here, but frankly . . . it's too depressing. You have to go back to the Watergate era to see numbers quite so horrible for the GOP. McCain's awful campaign is having awful consequences down the ballot. I spoke a little while ago to a senior Republican House member. 'There is not a safe Republican seat in the country,' he warned. 'I don't mean that we're going to lose all of them. But we could lose any of them.'"

And is it really possible that McCain might lose LOSE Arizona? Electoral-vote.com shows McCain only leading Obama by TWO points in his home state. HuffPo has a look at the lackadaisical ground game McCain has been playing in his own backyard."On the first visit to the McCain campaign's Arizona headquarters, the office was nearly empty. Three people worked quietly at desks. On the next visit, the office again had only a few people but was filled with a surplus of unused yard signs. The contrast is striking. The McCain campaign office is devoid of people, but its walls are lined with stacks of unsold yard signs. Meanwhile, the Obama office is filled with volunteers, but signs fly out of the door almost as fast as they arrive."

On our side, Dems--quite thoroughly unused to being in this position--feel like we also should be sobbing into a beer, because isn't that what we always do at this point in a presidential election? Andrew Sullivan, ina comment for the London Times, says "To put it bluntly: they simply cannot believe the polls right now. The numbers are too good for a Democrat running for the presidency from scratch. They just don't feel right. A clear lead for a nonincumbent black guy from Chicago against a war hero and a Barbie doll? Shurely shome mishtake. But in fact there is no obvious mishtake."

Even Evil Undead Karl Rove has his own website dontcha you know, and on it is an electoral vote tracker. And um...well... he's showing 306 electoral vote for Obama right now.... I can keep from barfing long enough to enjoy the moment.... Rove recently told the London Times that if "Obama wins the presidential election, it will be because he has beaten the Republicans at their own game... The Democrats have copied Rove's formidable tactics and ground operation, pumping out a disciplined message, assembling a broad-based coalition that includes young first-time voters and African-Americans and drowning their Republican opponents with money... Rove recalled how Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, outlined their electoral strategy at the Democratic convention in August: 'He explicitly said we have deliberately copied the army of persuasion of the Republicans.'" Yeah, don't break your arm patting yourself on the back, Karl.

And I've found another map to obsess about in the Congressional Quarterly. They also have a good one of the House Races.

And more pretty graphs with yet another way of looking at the Road map to 270 for McCain. It doesn't look easy....Also a comparison to the 2000 and 2004 races. Looks MUCH more promising for Obama.

As always I like to wind up on FiveThirtyEight.com, where I can look at Obama's "win percentage" which right now is at 96.7%. Just a reminder, that means that at fivethirtyeight, McCain wins in only 3.3% of the election outcome scenarios that they can envision.

Iphone apps?

If I were really really obsessive, I'd have stolen Eric's iPhone and be following poll results there on the urban Daddy or Info Chimps apps. Well, I would but we couldn't get them to download. I'm working on it...

In the meantime, there's also an Election twitter page, which includes tweets from both campaigns and I hope will have some updates on election night. I want instant results!