The national race, if one existed, now looks static

Barack Obama rallies the troops in Cleveland yesterday. After several days of incremental gains for President Barack Obama, today's snap polls seem to be all about noise. The latest numbers, plus the amount of movement compared to yesterday:

RAND is not a traditional poll, but the online tracking of a large group of people over time. It's unproven methodology, to say the least. Of these, only Gallup and ABC/WaPo call cell phones. Looks like just float within the MoE on all of these. Romney leads three. Obama leads three. They are tied in two. I think it's safe to say that the race has stabilized at the national level.

Polling guru Sam Wang, who only looks at state polling because, you know, that's how our elections work, says the race has been static much longer than just recently:

Ro-mentum ended around October 11th, the date of the VP Biden-Ryan debate and reversed around October 16th, Debate #2. Now the median EV expectation is at a plateau around Obama 293 EV, Romney 245 EV.

The big lead Obama gained over the summer gave him the padding he needed to ride out his first debate problem, and he's tied to trailing by a point in the aggregate of the irrelevant national polls despite problems with overly restrictive likely voter screens.

Still, there's an important truth in those restrictive likely voter screens'their voters are more committed to voting than ours. Their big advantage is that the likeliest voters'wealthier, whiter, older'also happen to be the biggest components of their base. Younger and browner voters are less likely to turn out.

So take those RV-LV differences as a lesson about what GOTV is all about'if only those "certain" to vote turn out, it'll be a coin flip at the national level, and the states will be closer than they need to be. If we get those who will "probably" vote, we're looking at a solid national victory, comfortable margins in the most important states, and a more robust Electoral College victory by picking up the tightest states like Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.

I'm all about bigger victory margins, and so should you. So please help get out the vote with our GOTV partners at Worker's Voice.