Obama-Romney polling

There have been several recent polls that have shown President Barack Obama way ahead. There has been significant criticism that these polls have too many Democrats and too few Republicans. That's certainly a good point, but there are a few polls that do drag the overall number down. Are the Bain attacks working? Is the polling moving toward Barack Obama? Most of these attacks are in the swing states. So, below are the swing states that have had one or more polls in June and July-August to see the change. Below that is the national polling broken down by month, separating July from August.

Of the 11 swing states which had polls both months we see that only one has moved towards President Obama by more than 2 points and 5 of the 11 haven't moved towards him at all. Likewise the national polling hasn't varied that much. I suppose Democrats could get optimistic that President Obama has been gaining every month, but adding 1.4 points over three months is within the margin of error and it certainly doesn't create a slam dunk win. If we don't go by month, and start on July 22, Obama's lead goes up 1 point to 4.9. That's not a knock-out blow by any means, although it's a healthy margin. Of course we got there by arbitrarily picking a start date, use several polls that critics believe are Democratic heavy, and ignore the state polls.