Two questions arise from the Washington Post/ABC poll. Since they find an unusually high gap — an outlier from all other polling — what kind of sample produced it? And does this really show a shift in likely voters to Barack Obama, when state-by-state polling shows the race tightening in the other direction? The answer is that a poor sample still could show some movement:

Dan Karipides write: Internet Freedom Trail: Biased Polls and Who is Fooled

The internet is in a tizzy over the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll released last night that shows Obama up by 9 points. The poll is horribly biased and not worth a second thought. I could delve into the details and explain why but that's not what I want to focus on.

Just to get it out of the way, the poll internals show a party affiliation advantage to Democrats of +10. If leaners are forced to make a choice, the Democrats have a +16 advantage. That is quite simply hogwash. The average advantage of Democrats vs. Republicans in the last 6 or so national elections is around 3% and variations in either direction have been minimal. If there really were +16% more Democrats than Republicans the election would be over and almost every state would be blue. That clearly isn't the case.

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Strata Sphere

Is Operation Chaos Messing With The Polls?

I was not a really big fan of Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos”, but the fact is he led a sizable number of Repubs and others to register as Democrats in order to vote in the primaries. Here is one example of the havoc he was able to achieve:

HotAir

Gallup tracking poll: Dead heat again

Conventional wisdom held that Barack Obama would benefit from an economic crisis, but at least according to Gallup’s daily tracking poll, it’s put a dent in Obama’s momentum. He lost his three-point lead abruptly and has dropped back into a tie at 46% with John McCain among likely voters. That contrasts sharply with the polls from the Washington Post/ABC and Fox, which showed Obama gaining some momentum: