What is going on with polls

People on the dem side are getting really excited about the polls coming out. I council caution. For one thing many of these polls show big drops in support for mccain moving him from 46 down to 39. The reason for this is a big drop in indy support. Kos cites the Fox News/ opinion dynamics poll.

Opinion Dynamics for Fox News. 9/22-23. Registered voters. 3% (9/8-9 results)

McCain (R) 39 (45)
Obama (D) 45 (42)

Thirty nine? Really? Thirty-freaking-nine?

And this poll was conducted before McCain cut and run on the debates.

Update: Let's dig a bit into the internals (PDF).

Independents

McCain (R) 31 (46)
Obama (D) 36 (31)

That one's gotta hurt. That's a 20-point swing.

The clear trend here is not a massive move in support towards obama. it is the indys moving back into the undecided column. This indicates a softening for support towards mccain but it does not mean that these voters are unlikely to go right back to him in a couple of days or the coming weeks. One thing that makes me think this is possible is the Dkos tracking poll.

Date	McCain	Obama
09/24	44	48
09/23	43	49
09/22	43	49
09/21	42	49
09/20	42	50
09/19	42	49
09/18	43	49
09/17	44	48
09/16	44	48
09/15	45	48
09/14	45	47
09/13	47	47
09/12	46	47
09/11	45	47

The trend of this poll is not a sinking of the mccain candidacy but instead a tightnening race. It peaked at obama 50 on Saturday but has been coming back together since then even as mccain continues to fail and flail.vSo lets not get to giddy about the polling data right now. It is possible that his support outside the base is collapsing like some polls suggest but i have doubts.