Daily Kos Elections Polling Wrap: Wednesday brings lots of new national polls, intriguing internals

Some of the time, polls are released with the sole intent of giving the public a snapshot of where a race stands at a particular time. Most (but not all) media polls would fall in that category. But news outlets will also poll races where they want to gauge the impact of a recent news event, seeking to divine whether said news story is a legitimate "game changer."

Campaign polls, or other sponsored polling, often tries to do far more than that. They are released to establish a narrative.

Today, on a relatively slow polling day, we will explore some of those motives, because there are some pretty intriguing ones today.

On to the numbers:

PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:

NATIONAL (CBS News): Romney d. Obama (47-46)

NATIONAL (Fox News): Obama d. Romney (45-41)

NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama d. Romney (47-45)

NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Romney d. Obama (47-46)

NATIONAL (YouGov): Obama d. Romney (47-44)

NEW JERSEY (Quinnipiac): Obama d. Romney (49-38)

NEW MEXICO (PPP): Obama d. Romney (49-44)

VIRGINIA (Rasmussen): Obama d. Romney (47-46)

DOWNBALLOT POLLING:

FL-16 (Public Opinion Strategies for Buchanan): Rep. Vern Buchanan (R) 54, Keith Fitzgerald (D) 32

NJ-SEN (Quinnipiac): Sen. Robert Menendez (D) 47, Joe Kyrillos (R) 34

WA-01 (DMA Market Research for Hobbs): John Koster (R) 30, Darcy Burner (D) 13, Steve Hobbs (D) 12, Suzan DelBene (D) 11, Laura Ruderman (D) 5

A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump ...