Gawd, the point of my conclusion is that it is almost impossible to dignify the basis for any of these polls with the noun “data.”  When we read about any poll, what we read tells us more about who conducted the poll and who is publishing the results than about the subject of the poll itself!  My guess is that we are in furious agreement over the proposition that polls always serve those who conduct them, so all I am trying to do is promote increased awareness of how to read anything the media decides to throw at us!

Gawd, in the absence of a clear and concise third-party tutorial on how to read polls (which would be more specific than, but hopefully as entertaining as, HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS), we can do well to read the Gallup commentary, rather than just looking at the numbers.  First, we should consider the following paragraph:
—
As the recent trend shows, Obama did not gain any additional support in the poll since his generally well-reviewed acceptance speech on Thursday night. However, the Aug. 28-30 field period also includes two days of interviewing since the Friday morning announcement by McCain that he has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to join him on the Republican ticket. Thus, it is unclear whether the full positive impact on national voters of the Democratic convention or Obama’s speech would have been greater if not for the Palin announcement.
—
Beyond such details, we also need to take note of the qualifier in the caption, “based on a three-day rolling average.”  Averaging is a “smoothing” process designed to distract from large changes over a short period of time in favor of more prolonged trends.  This technique usually makes it difficult to determine if the glass is half-empty or half-full, because it is hard to tell is the water level is going up or down!

In conclusion note that the lead paragraph of data interpretation sees more cause for optimism in the numbers than you did:
—
Though down slightly from the eight-point lead Obama held mid-convention, this represents a clear improvement for the Democratic candidate’s positioning in the campaign compared to a week ago when the race was about tied. The last Gallup update conducted entirely before Obama’s convention and vice presidential announcement was based on interviews conducted Aug. 20-22, and showed Obama up by two points, 46% to 44%.
—
What I find more interesting in light of the Babington analysis is that I could not find an Associated Press release on this poll on Google News or an account of such a release on Google Blogs!  Did the Associated Press decided to stick its head in the sand on this one?  Enquiring minds want to know!

Fox news “Alaska right next door to Russa”.  News is really propaganda a tool for the powers that be.  Those of us who attempt and work hard at finding real news must try with gusto, for most people out and about,  perceive propaganda as the news.  Even McCain with his ignorant VP choice could win,  because of propagand tool, but only if the powers and elite want it.  Both selected choices for president, Obama or McCain, may fill their needs.

It’s already started - the crucification of anyone who dares to question or bad mouth Obama.

Obama’s as big a warmonger as bush/cheney.
He’s actually more dangerous since his coronation is nearly complete and no one will dare question the “messiah”.

He and Biden are already playing up the 9/11 and Bin Laden lies to promote more and escalated wars to keep us “safe” and get the ones who “really attacked us on 9/11”.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? context=va&aid=9995

On my own blog I made it clear that I was writing about Obama’s TEXT, rather than his (or his audience’s) PERFORMANCE:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2008/08/obama-numbers-from-at-yahoo.html

This was a METHODOLOGICAL choice on my part.  I wanted to examine the words dispassionately without getting caught up in the heat of the moment, so to speak.  I had applied the same methodology to both Clinton speeches;  and in all three cases I gave hyperlinks to my text source (Huffington Post for the Clintons and ROLLING STONE for Obama).  I still hold to this methodology and therefore take issue with your “worse” adjective in the second sentence of the introduction.

Having said all that, I have now read Babington’s text and find it hard to believe that he read the same source I did.  Furthermore, since the Associated Press does not yet really live in the world of the World Wide Web, none of us will ever know IF Babington used a publicly-available text source and WHICH ONE he used.  Still, the piece was clearly labeled “Analysis.”  I continue to believe that every reader is entitled to form and express his/her own interpretation of the text, knowing full well that the act of interpretation is always motive-driven.  The consequence is that the interpretation often tells us more about the motives than it does about the text, and I think that this is exactly what happened in this piece.

Finally, in response to Daniel Adam Smith, at least AP was honest enough to call this analysis.  It is what AP tries to pass off as news that has degraded them so profoundly from the accepted standard they once were.  We experienced AP (which, by the way, calls its staff “writers,” rather than “reporters,” these days) at its worst in their coverage a week ago of Obama’s announcement of his having selected Biden as a running mate:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2008/08/joseph-biden-according-to-associate.html

Needless to say, Reuters does not have a track record that is much better:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2008/06/spiking-news-about-impeachment.html

This is why Al Jazeera English has become my preferred choice for “straight” news:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2008/08/hillary-trumps-bill.html

They seem to have a good way to use their own staff to figure out when they can rely on what the wire sources tell them.

Obama had an opportunity to wrap this up. The intro video was good. The speech sucked and this guy was correct to call it out.

I was expecting something along the lines of “I have a Dream”.

What he delivered was “Your life sux, you hate Bush, you have less money, but I and only I can save you”.

Bah. It was a total flop. I highly doubt that this one will be played like MLK. Historic it was not. Rhetoric it was.

Not to mention all of the buzz he’s getting from this, LOL.

Yeah, Olbermann did a piece on this guy.  So what’s the big deal; he wrote his opinion of the speech.  Viva la differance (sic).  I just think this article and Olbermann’s comments are a waste of perfectly good electrons.

Newspapers all over the country will be taking feeds from Fox News. The Corporate Media want McCain (well, actually his tax breaks and lack of regulation) to win this election and they’re going to do what it takes to help.