Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: The polling you don't hear about

Above is pollster.com aggregate without Rasmussen and Gallup (Obama 46.6, Romney 45.7 [morning update].) See explanation.

Above is Rasmussen and Gallup alone (Obama 45.7, Romney 46.1 [morning update].) "All polls included" is here.

Note that many pollsters are switching to Likely Voters (LV) but not all have. For the next few weeks, try and match apples to apples and pay attention to Registered Voters (RV) vs Likely Voters (LV) polls. And since everyone uses a different model, the difference will vary (7 points in the recent CNN poll, 1 in the LA Times poll.)

NY Times:

Monday was a day of frustration for Republicans as the delay in beginning their convention deprived them of their national stage and brought a fresh airing of intraparty tensions.

So the ABC/WaPo poll says they are "neck and neck" and yet...
As president, Romney would do more to favor: Middle class 32% / Wealthy 58% (ABC News/Washington Post, RV, 8/22-25) http://t.co/...
' @pollreport via web

Obama does more to favor: Middle class 62% / Wealthy 23% (ABC News/Washington Post Poll, RV, 8/22-25) http://t.co/...
' @pollreport via web
Seems like the more friendly and likable person: Obama 61% / Romney 27% (ABC News/Washington Post Poll, RV, 8/22-25) http://t.co/...
' @pollreport via web
And don't miss...
Regardless of whom you support, who do you think will win the election? Obama 58% / Romney 36% (USA Today/Gallup Poll) http://t.co/...
' @pollreport via web
From Gallup:

Americans' prediction of who will win is significant since they have generally been correct in predicting the winner of past presidential elections.

More (it's not just Gallup)... this is a repeat observation from Saturday:

Even though the AP-GfK poll has Obama by a point, when asked, the public figures Obama to win 58-32, up from 49-48 from December 2011. The CNN poll from Aug 8 had the public thinking Obama would win 63-33.

Thomas Edsall:

The Republican ticket is flooding the airwaves with commercials that develop two themes designed to turn the presidential contest into a racially freighted resource competition pitting middle class white voters against the minority poor.

Tell it.

Jonathan Bernstein:

The hallmark of Republicans in the Frank Luntz era has been to find words that test well and embrace them, and find words that test badly and tar the opposition with them. Not concepts, not ideas, and certainly not policies. Words. So Republicans say they are all for 'patient-centered' health care, but they're against the 'divisive' Barack Obama.

And in other news, this is from WaPo:

Four Army soldiers based in southeast Georgia killed a former comrade and his girlfriend to protect an anarchist militia group they formed that stockpiled assault weapons and plotted a range of anti-government attacks, prosecutors told a judge Monday.

Seth Masket:

Look, most Americans pay no attention to politics, and then comes the convention, and then it's like a pageantry, and that's as interesting as politics is going to get. I feel it's slightly bogus when political reporters say things like, "Oh, no policy happens." Like you were going to write about policy if it did happen? All you do is write about image and message for the entire year and then the convention comes and you complain because it's only about image and message.

I agree with [Hannah] Rosin: the pageantry matters! This is the part of the election cycle where normal Americans (read: not political junkies) begin to pay attention to the candidates, the parties, and the issues, and the conventions are a big part of how that happens.