I also notice people tend to agree with polls all the more when THEIR candidate is leading, an easy observation to make here, yea I know.
that's kind of my point... obama has been in the lead almost this entire campaign, and now that mccain has inched ahead for a couple days you're posting a billion sources about why he's ahead in the polls... but you've ignored all the signs about how this is shortlived bump, how he's declined rapidly, and how overall it doesn't look good for McCain.
Before Labor Day you have the die-hards paying attention to the candidates and thus being the ones participating in polls. Now that it's post Labor Day you have a large majority of mainstream voters (like me) paying attention and now getting polled. I see post Labor Day polls as much more accurate, however I think they will progressively get more accurate as the big day approaches.
That doesn't make much sense at all. I'm sorry, that's not how polls work. Poll takers don't go "HEY! WE'RE HAVING A POLL! WHY DON'T YOU CALL US AND PARTICIPATE?!?" because that'd be horribly skewed and innacurate with no respectable sampling. That's why no one takes website polls seriously (like the one on the top of this page)...
Poll takers gather the sample, they don't ask for the sample to come to them. They make the effort to contact gather people. They don't ask if their die-hard followers first.
(of course i'm not speaking of website polls like on the top of this thread or on AOL.com or Fox News, no one takes those polls seriously because, for example, obviously on a website like AOL/Fox which has a very conservative audience of course they'll always pick McCain, it's not a fair sample. And on a website with a bunch of younger people and people interested in keeping their technology rights, it's going to go to Obama.)