Alan Greenblatt is a GOVERNING correspondent.
E-mail: mailbox@governing.comTwitter: @governing
What This Really Means
It's still too early to believe that polls matter, but the latest ones are interesting. Obama is up 51-45, according to Rasmussen, while Obama reaches 50 percent for the first time in the Gallup daily tracking poll, compared with 42 percent for McCain.
What's interesting is that the undecideds are all breaking for Obama. That might not last, but the funny things about the polls this year has been that all the volatility has been on Obama's side. His lead grew or narrowed, but that was because of the waxing and waning of his own support. McCain never seemed to budge over 43 or 45 percent.
That's obviously not where McCain wants to be. And that's where I think Palin would have been a problematic pick even without the current hullabaloo. She's a "base" pick, not one who would have brought undecideds over to McCain.
It will be fascinating to see whether McCain can get a bounce out of a convention that so far has been so, well, unconventional.
GOVERNING Politics is the place for news and analysis on campaigns and elections. If there's a ballot measure in California, a legislative election in Alabama, a mayoral election in Anchorage or a governor's race in Rhode Island, GOVERNING Politics probably is writing about it. We love everything about state and local politics, from polls and campaign ads to policy debates and demographic trends.
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