OK, so the national polls are definitely tightening a bit. RealClearPolitics has the spread at +5.9 for Obama, down from a +6.7 yesterday. Pollster.com has it at +6 for Obama, down from +7 yesterday. Also, the Pew poll, at 53/38, is increasingly looking out of place, and it’s buffering those numbers some. I’d put the gap somewhere around +5, with 6 days to go, and all the movement in McCain’s gains, not so much any in Obama’s losses. People are still claiming “statistical noise,” but I haven’t seen any noise in Obama’s direction; it’s a pretty focused sound at the moment.

The good news is that’s still a large lead. +5 is still 300+ electoral votes. The concern troll says McCain has basically made up a point a day this week; when does it stop? At what point does his support level off? The reasonable person says “yes, but Obama hasn’t lost any support, and is still over 50%.” This is also very true.

Zogby’s poll today finally stalled at +5, with no gains for McCain in the last 2 days, but Rasmussen cutting from 5 to 3 in one day is disconcerting. Research 2000’s daily sample giving McCain +1 on the day is three straight days of McCain stall or movement up. Here’s to hoping that stops tomorrow.

One of the big discussions on the net right now is if State polls aren’t reflecting the tightening, or if they’re just lagging behind the trackers. Two big battleground dumps occured today, both of them looking fantastic for Obama. The problem is, they polled through Sunday, so they aren’t picking up any movement for Monday or Tuesday. However, it does reflect Sunday, and looking at all the polls, Sunday felt like a real “squeeze” day, where McCain made his first jump. But again, now that we’re in the final week, data that is 2 days old could be considered obsolete. There is some real movement going on at the moment, so it’s hard to guage if the state polls are picking it up. That they got Sunday and were still so good is a good sign. I’d prefer a Sun-Tue reading, though.

McCain’s making marginal gains in Pennsylvania—it doesn’t look like enough to swing the state—but there’s some movement putting the state close to a single digit lead for Obama. And this is my next concern: Joe the Plumber. McCain and Palin have stuck with this guy a lot longer than anyone thought they would. It’ll be two weeks. He’s also playing surrogate for the McCain campain now, so they’ve got a party-liner in sheeps clothing with him. If it weren’t being shown to have some effect, they’dve dropped it by now. Also, as dumb as it is to most of us, it’s McCain’s first positive messaging in weeks: he’s going to help the small business guy. True or not doesn’t really matter. It has the effect of linking McCain to the little guy, something Obama had run away with.

The tightening in the national trackers pisses me off, because it seems like for all the absolutely horrible things McCain has done, he’s not really paying a price. This has been a historically bad campaign by him, so it serves that it should be a historically bad loss. I just don’t think it’s looking that way. He only has to be hot on one day, November 4th, to pull this thing off, and he’s lining things up to have a shot at that. This isn’t the primaries. None of these states are already in the bag for Obama. That’s what worries me. It feels like McCain has the momentum, or at least the news cycles, and Obama isjust waiting for us to vote.

I want crushing defeat, and I’m not seeing it. That’s my concern.

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