A real improvement or a random noise?

[Sam Spade]

Feels like a blip to me.  Of course, we will know more in about 3 days when the sample rolls out of the mix.

The best way to look at Rasmussen is to compare his weekly averages, IMO and try and spot trends.

[Sam Spade]

Maybe.  It's also quite possible that the last Time poll was an outlier, (which was my gut feeling at the time)because no one else showed the same results they did, except for Gallup LV and Gallup LV is a very different poll and typically isn't accurate till near the election.

I also make my judgment based on the fact that no other polls out in the past week (AP-Ipsos, CBS, IBD, Fox, Zogby) seem to be showing this movement.

Time will tell, however.  BTW, the margin in the latest Time poll is 6 point for Bush, not 4

[Sam Spade]

It's 4 among RV whether or not Nader is included, which is what Polling Report is reporting.  It's 6 among LV whether or not Nader is included, which is what Time is reporting.

[Sam Spade]

So, right now for the week of Sept. 19-25, we have Bush 48.04 to Kerry 45.83 or a lead of roughly Bush +2.27 for the week.

The previous week of Sept. 12-18, it was Bush 48.44 to Kerry 45.31, or a lead of roughly Bush +3.13 for the week.

I'll buy that from a poll weighted 39D-35R-26I as such.  There might be some movement here, but it's sort of hard to tell whether it's that or just variance under the MOE, which is still could easily be, even with 7,000 LV samples.

[Sam Spade]

That was his sample for the specific day, (9/25) where it is 49.8 to 45.4.

The average of the last three days (9/23-25) is 47.9 to 46.3.

As to Kerry leads on certain days, if we were to theoretically say that Bush's lead under this weighting is roughly 2.5% (which is a reasonable guess), then each daily sample would roughly have a MOE of +/- 3%, which means that we would get a Kerry lead somewhere on the plotted graph every once in a while (not doing the math to figure it out specifically).