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The very light polls taking place right now are best viewed the way we would a Six Sigma quality control survey. There we'd be looking for signs that a process was not within statistical control, or was not otherwise perfect.

45% doesn't mean what you think it means looked at that way. Rather, if your expectation from prior data and experience was that it ought to be 46%, getting 45% wouldn't be 'good enough', it'd be a DISASTER.

On the other hand if your expectation was 30%, 45% would be 'more than meeting expectations' ~ or a good score ~ and the final report would go in your record with an 'atta boy'.

When we have a trend-line as our sine qua non ~ then we want to see how things were going in prior periods and even prior years. We want to see if a specific process (e.g. getting Romney elected) looks like it's on track, or doing better than planned, or worse than expected.

You'd be doing that right up to the final two weeks then you'd pay for a real poll with a lot of sample cells, and some nuanced questions, and you'd drop more money on 2 or 3 of them than you did all the others for the last 4 years.

We are not there yet. So, what do these polls mean for Romney from the Romney team point of view? Basically, a Six Sigma analysis would tell Romney HE IS A WINNER. That's because he more than meets his own expectations and his own history, and, his opponent, Obama, is not doing as well as his own history, nor his expectations.

And all of that is probably a Happyvalley situation for the Mittbots until we look at the big clock on the wall and notice that Romney still hasn't hit 50% on a real election in his life. Best he could do in MA was 49.77%. In most of his primary elections (counting 2008) he was down in the lower two digits at best, and sometimes in single digits.

Later primaries without competition, or where political chacanery had destroyed the process (eg VA 2012) really don't count in a Six Sigma reviewed ~ there, you'd be getting shown the exit door to the plant. Told to get your car off the lot machschnell.

So, we have a guy looking at his stuff in isolation, or in comparison to Obama ~ who is showing up to this election with a 10 million vote overhang in the last ~ and it's neck and neck every now and then.

His aggregate career performance (this production line this decade) is really not up to snuff ~ it's erratic, too many questionable performances, no real showings up against competetors of equal status, and he's hidden half the data files!

OK, so that's a quality review ~ two weeks before the election we should get some new, good life data drawn from a sufficient number of points on the compass, and then the fun is all gone. Both candidates will know from the second poll then if one of them is a winner or a loser. At the same time such a poll at this point would be meaningless. The fickel public is fickel, so we are stuck with Six Sigma and it doesn't look good for Romney. At the same time Obama has cheated in every election he's entered, so we'd fired him if we'd caught him.