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You are right that no one has it---but it's critical to add "ALL THE TIME." Rasmussen nailed it in 1994, and was pretty good (as I recall) in 2000 and 2004. But all the pollsters were pretty accurate in 2006 (when I blew them off) and 2008. Some are grossly out of line, but it's hard to tell because some adjust their samples for the last poll before the election so that they appear close.

I'm not arguing that Ras is consistently better than everyone else, only that this time around he appears to have already adjusted his sample correctly based on the 2010 and 2011 turnout models---which admittedly were not presidential election years. But the question is not who is best on average over time, but who seems to have the right sample this time around. And there is NOTHING anywhere to suggest that there are MORE Dems out there now than there were in 08, and a great deal of evidence to suggest that those who are Dems or who are planning to vote Dem is down substantially.

Think of it this way. There are 80 million Democrats. There are 65 million Republicans. Some of these people claim to be independent, or even adherents of other parties.

When they vote they vote for the winner in a single member district!

Republicans can beat Democrats every time simply by convincting a bunch of Democrats to not show up to vote, while simultaneously convincing a bunch of Republicans to show up to vote who would otherwise ignore the election.

Both parties have such folks. With Republicans Socons and Religiouscons have demonstrated that they will stay away at the drop of the hat so as a rule of thumb clever politicians just lie to them. Only a fool would tell them to go away, or mess with their primaries.

In the case of Democrats any African American politician will tell you that as soon as black voters detect weakness in the Democrat they'll stay home. They are less prone to vote on social issues, but they will vote on long term unemployment problems.

This is the reason so many Democrat mouthpieces accuse Republicans of attempting to suppress the vote BTW ~ and as long as there are more Democrats than Republicans they will continue to make the charge.

The pollsters look for some reflection of this balance in all of their results. If anything gets really out of whack they don't report it.

So, this year the Republican problem is that Obama got 69 million votes last time, and that's 4 million more voters than we have even if everybody shows up. We also seem to have soured a number of Socons and Religiouscons on the idea of voting ~ and we may have even PO'd some of the Fiscalcons.

It's clear that suppressing the Democrat vote would be useful. Photo IDs might tackle a few hundred thousand of them, but how do you talk the others out of voting? Not clear we've got a story sufficient to cause the Democrats to give up all hope ~ so that means we are depending on them to come to that conclusion themselves.

Folks, it won't work!

It takes more effort than the Republican party is currently prepared to muster. Not to sound like a gloomy gus, but I'm waiting on someone to tell us how we will do it ~ and poll watching ain't the way.