The Week In Review - Polls: The Great Lagging Indicator

Polls are a great way to capture a snapshot in time in elections. One of the problems with polls (particularly presidential ones) is that polls lag behind events. It appears now the Sen. McCain started to gain some momentum in national polls shortly after his change in campaign staff 2 weeks ago. There is some speculation that Sen. Gramm's comments on Thursday may have some effect, although as yet that has not come to fruitition. In part, this may be because of the lag between the news cycle and when polls are published. The current daily tracking polls from Rasmussen and Gallup both show the race as a statistical tie, and that if anything, the race has tightened over the last several days. Because statewide polls are run relatively infrequently (this week there were polls in only 9 states) fluctuations, particularly early on the the contest are rare. Admittedly, I am considering tying states to the national polls, so that they fluctuate as the national polls do, although I haven't fully worked out in my head how I'm going to get this done, or for how long. The one thing that is clear, is that over the last couple of weeks John McCain has gained in most polls that have been taken and the overall race is probably closer than my projections are currently suggesting.