The Potential Fly in my Prediction Ointment

There is no doubt, no doubt at all given the polling data that we are witnessing a late Obama surge. I poo-poo the Zogby polls because they simultaneously show Romney opening up a lead in California and I just don't buy it, but the rest of them do show a clear move to Obama nationally and in several states. The one that gave me religion on this subject was the CNN/Opinion Research Poll http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/04/national.poll/index.html showing Obama pulling ahead. I will caution that polls taken the weekend before a major election are volatile, but that having been said this correlates with an ABC News/Washington Post survey and a CBS/New York Times survey showing a basically tied race. Only one poll, Rasmussen, shows Clinton gaining.

What does this late surge mean? It means that Obama's margins in the states he's likely to win are probably going to be a little bit larger, Clinton's in her states a little bit smaller, and a couple states at the margins might flip. I'll stand by my predictions with the caveat that there is a large shift in the polling that I might not be fully appreciating.