TheMillerCircle.org

The June Zogby Poll for the Presidential race was released a few days ago. It was conducted during June 11-30 of this year and based on interviews with 46, 274 likely voters from all 50 states. What is always interesting about Zogby is their record for predicting political contests, perhaps because their polling methods are more extensive. In any case this recent poll has Obama leading McCain by 44% to 38% in the popular vote. When the polling data was extrapolated to the electoral college vote, Obama was leading 273-160. A total of eleven states, with 105 electoral votes, were within the margin of error (0.5%) of the poll, so no electoral college score was given for those states. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.

What surprised me in this poll was the significance of Libertarian candidate Bob Barr, who garnered 6% of the polling vote. Barr is a former Congressman who was ultraconservative and very hawkish while in Congress, but has a very strong anti-war position, which I think accounts for his surprisingly strong showing.
The Barr data is not good news for McCain. It certainly explains why McCain keeps trying to get further to the positions that conservatives hold, except, with McCain’s hawkish stand on the war and his insistence that the surge means we are winning the war (what does it mean when you win a war in a country where more than 80% of the population wants you to leave, and where significant violence takes place daily) it’s a very open question whether McCain can eat into Barr’s now rather signifiant visibility. The trouble with McCain is that he seems to suffer when he gets more exposure and, as they say "he ain’t seen nothin yet."
As for Obama, his solid position in the polls, both for the popular and electoral college vote means that his movement to the center that he has been criticized in the recent weeks, probably doesn’t hurt him that much once you take McCain’s situation in hand.
I have always been biased towards the Zogby polling data. In the 2006 election, they predicted 17 of 18 races in the US Senate and the one they did not predict was so close that it fell within the margin of error (despite the fact that they predicted the wrong candidate to win in Missouri: Talent over McCaskill).
Pundits often tell you not to pay attention to polling data until after the conventions when Americans then take the political race more seriously, typically following Labor day. This year we are celebrating Labor day in an unusual way: we are going to combine Easter Egg hunting with Labor Day to go out and try and find a few Labor Unions.