Behind The Numbers: The Latest Polls

I've read all the topline sheets so you don't have to. Here are the nuggets that are driving the numbers.

In ABC News's tracking, the most volatile "movables" give McCain a 14 point advantage; the least volatile movables (i.e., they're not likely to change their minds)  split their support between the two candidates. In total, this group takes up about 12 percent of the projecting voting universe.

In Quinnipiac's poll of Florida, among those who've already voted, Obama leads by 24 percentage points. In Ohio, he leads by 26 percentage points. And he's tied among white voters in Pennsylvania.

Obama's lead among independent voters in the Zogby track is 16 percentage points. And he leads by four points in Western states.

In the AP/GfK poll out today, Obama and McCain are deemed as being capable of making the right national security decisions by roughly the same amount of Colordans. Floridians give McCain a slight edge here, but they report themselves to be under more economic duress comparatively.  McCain also has slight national security question leads in North Carolina and Ohio; Obama leads narrowly on the question in Nevada, and the two tie in New Hampshire.  Speaking of NH: it's the one state where a majority of voters do NOT believe that Obama has kept his promise to run a positive campaign ...  although McCain's numbers on the same question are uniformly terrible. In Florida, a total of 46% of voters believe that "violent"  describes black people extremely well, well, or moderately well. But large majorities believe that the words "dependable" and "hard working" also describe black people.  The same numbers apply across the board. Democrat Mark Udall has a 12 point lead in the Colorado Senate race.'  Among all likely voters, there's a slight preference for withdrawing troops on Iraq based on the conditions on the ground. 
In Franklin and Marshall's latest poll of Pennsylvania (Obama's up double digits), Obama has a strong lead among those whose personal financial situation is worse than last year, and McCain has a strong lead among those who personal financial situation is better than last year.

The new NBC News / Wall Street Journal / MySpace poll looked at lapsed voters -- what the pros call "sporadic" voters -- and new voters. Obama has a sizeable advantage among both those groups, but they aren't as likely to vote as habitual voters.