Monday, November 03, 2008

National Polls Magically Converge!

The latest from 538.com:

National Polls Magically Converge!

It's amazing how much convergence there has been in the national numbers over the past 24 hours. All 13 polls included in the RCP average, plus the Research 2000 national tracker, has this race between 5 points and 11 points in Obama's favor, essentially within one another's margins of error. All but two of those pollsters have race between 5 points and 9 points.

What do I think this means? Has the race settled down some?

Perhaps in some proverbial sense it has. But I also think that pollsters peek at one another's results, and that there's something of a herd mentality not to be the one who falls out of line. Remember, folks, it's these final sets of national numbers that will go down on the record for all time's sake. Remember also that a pollster has a lot of legitimate wiggle room for how they put their turnout models together. I'm not accusing anyone of anything in particular, but this is the time of year when a lot of pollsters might be tempted to put their fingers on the scale.

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