Hardly a full diet of polling today but just an amuse bouche. In Arizona, Rasmussen has the state’s Senior Senator leading by 9 points; he had held a 20-point lead in Rasmussen’s last poll of Arizona dated back in April. As I’ve pointed out before, Arizona — with its older population and what remains a comparative lack of Democratic Party infrastructure — would probably favor John McCain by 3-5 points even if he were not from there. Attempts by either campaign to claim Arizona as a swing state are probably just an exercise in spin.
Arguably the more interesting result is in the Gallup Daily Tracker, which shows Obama pulling 4 points ahead of McCain after having been tied with him for several days. When you see a result like this — when a poll steps back into line with other polls — it should not be read as momentum for one or another candidate so much as reversion to the mean. Nevertheless, just yesterday I was suggesting that there might have been just a smidgen of momentum toward John McCain in the polling numbers, and now that is harder to see.