Originally Posted by Jason Marcel

The risk that McCain is taking with that is that by making this campaign into a referendum about Obama, a lot of people will get to know him and see if he seems levelheaded enough to be competent as a President.

The only times that polls mean anything in the summer is when one candidate just completely starts to lose it and a public perception is formed that can hardly be undone. Dukakis had something like a 15 point lead on Bush in '88, and that changed immediately. Nearly happened to Carter in '76 when he was ahead by 20% and only won by 2.

What the polls have told us in first third of this campaign is that both candidates are liked better than the current President is. And since neither candidate has made any real gains (Obama leads by 5 or 6, then it fluctuates down a bit, and then goes back up and so on) It looks like all we have to wait for is where much of the middle ground goes, which seems to consistently account for about 10 to 12% of the vote, and they won't be a factor until after the conventions are done in September. And since the conventions are so close this year, we probably won't see either candidate getting that much of a bounce. This is all coming down to the undecideds this year, and unless somebody really starts to mess up, we're likely to see another election decided within the margin of error. McCain still has work to do, especially in individual states, where the electoral college heavily favors Obama right now.