Palin moving crowds and poll numbers

When it comes to polls and crowds, Sarah Palin knows how to move the numbers.  Added bonus for the McCain team, she's moving the numbers in the right direction.

Polls are up.  Crowds are up. Why?  It appears you can credit the Alaska Governor as McCain's running mate.

Polls are fluid and as we've seen in the last two weeks, they can fluctuate wildly.  They are merely a snapshot.  And the last few snapshots show that people are liking Palin.

It's all tied up

Most polls show the McCain - Obama contest a statistical tie.  That's up from the lead the Obama campaign had last week. Credit the post-convention bounce for McCain.

CNN in their "poll of polls" averages five major surveys to get a read of what's happening.  Specifically, they look at ABC/Washington Post, CBS, Gallup, Diageo/Hotline and their own poll.  They find that the contest is a virtual dead-heat at 48 percent apiece - a three point decline for Obama since Saturday.

 White flight?

So if it is just a tie, why the endless analysis?  The devil's in the details.

And the details of a new Washington Post/ABC News poll show a dramatic shift in the numbers of white women who, before the Democratic Convention, supported Barack Obama but now support John McCain.

"White women have moved from 50-42 percent in Obama's favor before the conventions to 53-41 percent for McCain now, a 20-point shift in the margin that's one of the single biggest post-convention changes in voter preferences," writes ABC's political analyst Gary Langer.  "The other, also to McCain's advantage, is in the battleground Midwest, where he's moved from a 19-point deficit to a 7-point edge."

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe doesn't buy it.

"I don't think you'll find many others that back up a 20-point reversal," Plouffe said at a briefing yesterday. "We certainly are not seeing any movement like that. Polls, time to time, particularly on the demographic stuff, can have some pretty wild swings."

Palin vs. Biden

What if the American public could just vote for the vice president?   A CNN/Opinion Research poll asked this odd question and it shows Palin beating Biden by a 53 percent to 44 percent margin.

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