J. J., your continuing this argument is really disappointing to me. You were wrong. Sure, BRTD is a graceless hack, but he fundamentally
is correct. Your argument is intellectually dishonest and I'm pretty sure you know it.
The Clinton +6 poll from ARG was a clear outlier. Other polls around it were showing clear gains for Obama, and in fact it was a gain from ARG's last poll for Obama too. You have to really go out on a limb to make such a number appear to be "tightening." Besides, your original quote was:
I'm not crazy about ARG or Zogby, but some of the other polls have been showing a tightening of the race.
You provided evidence with...an ARG poll. So what
non-ARG poll showed tightening? There was none. PPP went from O+11 to O+13. Research 2000 and Rasmussen both recorded moderate Obama leads in their first polls - Strategic Vision did too, shortly beforehand. To make your argument, you would have to:
1. Trust ARG above all other pollsters;
2. Create a trendline that totally ignores pollster's past relative slants on the race;
3. And ignore the swings observed between ARG's last poll and their newest ones that everyone but ARG was seeing.
And you're too competent for that.