I about had a fit a couple weeks back when everyone was talking about how Bush was ahead by 11 points following the Republican convention. There are good reasons why this isn’t the case.

For one, that was only one poll from one out of a dozen pollers. (One pollster had Kerry ahead by a point.) Bush was probably ahead that week, but not by 11 points.

Two, pollsters are not taking into consideration the trend of ditching the land line and going with only a cell phone. This leaves a lot of poor minorities and urban hipsters out of the poll sample, which can only skew the results toward Bush.

Three, pollsters have biases like everyone else. Case in point: Gallup-CNN-USA Today (which produced the 11 point lead). The CEO of Gallup is a Republican donor. And their sample reverses the proportion of Republicans and Democrats. (Dems usually make up close to 40% of voters, Repbs only a third or less. Gallup switches these numbers.)

Four, more people are registering to vote this year than usual. A lot of polls sample only “likely voters,” which can mean only those who voted the last time or two. All these new folks are a wild card, especially in swing states, and they’re not accounted for in some polls.

Finally, the raw numbers of the nation as a whole don’t mean a whole lot when you bring the Electoral College into it, which, after all, is how this thing is decided. One site is keeping track of the polls by state and updates the electoral vote count every day. You can also see a graph of the electoral vote trends over the last few months.

Verdict? Bush has had a slight lead since the Republican Convention, but it’s starting to drop off now. This is anybody’s race, and many people haven’t made up their mind yet. That’s good news for Kerry, because undecided voters tend to go with the new guy when they get to the voting booth.