Polling Update: October 14, 2008

McCain walks into this debate with the happy (or I guess unhappy if you're him) news that he's behind pretty much, well, everywhere. Fivethirtyeight.com calculates Obama's electoral vote count right now as 361, Electoral-vote.com has Obama with 357 electoral votes, Pollster.com gives him 333 votes, and RealClearPolitics.com gives him 286 votes even not counting the toss-ups. In national polls, Obama has a double digit lead over McCain in seven polls: Newsweek (+11), ABC/Post (+10), Democracy Corps (+10), Research 2000 (+10), Battleground (+13), Gallup (+10 using their Likely Voter II model) and CBS News/Times (+14).

Plus, Obama has taken definitive leads in battleground state polling from CNN/Time. (Results of the latest CNN Poll are first, and RCP's averages are in parentheses)

Colorado: Obama 51-47 (RCP Avg: Obama 50-45)
Florida: Obama 51-46 (RCP: Obama 49-45)
Missouri: McCain 49-48 (RCP: Obama 49-47)
Georgia: McCain 51-45 (RCP: McCain 51-44)

Personally, I continue to believe that polling is not capturing a vast number of newly registered Obama voters, and that it's underestimating his support among young voters. I'm going to go out on a limb here (knocking wood the whole time) and say that Obama will win thoe states by a larger margin than most people suspect in those states. You heard it here first.

=====================
20 days to the election!