I’m kind of beyond polls at this stage — although I found this analysis by Jay Cost very interesting. As he points out, the standard deviation this year is significantly higher than usual – which means that the polls that turn out to be wrong will be wronger than usual. Also, they’re not a conventional central cluster — a pyramid with a few outliers at either end. The McCain graph has almost no cluster anywhere, suggesting that the number you get depends as much on the “turnout model” cooked up in the pollsters’ office as on anything Mr and Mrs America tell ‘em down the phone line.

“Turnout model” is a very American phenomenon. In most other western countries, you don’t have to “register” your political identification. In Britain, where there are three national parties plus various Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish regional parties, partisan allegiance is more fluid. Likewise in Canada, where there are three-to-four national parties plus the Quebec separatists. In other words, it’s much easier to call up a thousand people at random and just ask who are you voting for. You might weight by age and class and geography, but not by political disposition — which is, after all, what the poll itself is supposed to be measuring. In Australia, voting is compulsory, so the famous US distinction between “registered” and “likely” voters is irrelevant.

So it might well be that those pollsters who are anticipating that this is the year that the quadrennially ballyhooed “youth vote” actually emerges are right. And those who say that the five-point turnout advantage Democrats had in Pennsylvania in 2006 will be a 15-point advantage this year might also be right. But half of this stuff is a turnout prediction masquerading as a poll.

This was the one that caught my eye, though:

In addition to leading 50-42% overall, Obama also leads men 50-42% and women 50-42%.

Wow. It’s raining men, hallelujah! Even in elections they lose, Republicans still win the guys: in 1996, Bob Dole won 44% of the male vote to Bill Clinton’s 43%. And that’s the Democrats’ biggest share of the bloke bloc in over 30 years. So, if that 50% holds up for Obama, we’re in for a seismic shift.

Or, alternatively, the poll’s a lot of hooey.