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Gallup intentionally does NOT weight its polls by party ID. This is one of the reasons why it is more volatile than other polls (in both directions).

Gallup separately publishes internals on a weekly basis. These polls essentially show that Obama is winning among Democrats with very few undecided voters, McCain is winning among Republicans with very few undecided voters, and that McCain is winning by 9 points among “pure Independents” with almost half of them still undecided. For comparative purposes, Kerry won this group 49-48 in 2004, while Bush won this group 47-45 in 2000.

If you weight these numbers by actual turnout by party ID based on exit poll data from elections going back to the 1980s and before, it looks like McCain has...a 2-4 point national lead. By golly, the McCain guy in PA may be right!

Here is a very handy link to the exit poll data I just mentioned. Note how stable the party affiliation numbers are from election to election going back at least two decades.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/independents/data-house.html

Again, what about the “massive Democrat registration” drive we heard about endlessly throughout the primaries? And what of Obama’s superior organization? ACORN? ACT? Big Labor? Etc.

I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but I’ve seen the new registration numbers for many states, in particular PA, and it doesn’t look good. Now, this may happen every election cycle, but we’re told by the media and the pundits that the Obama campaign is different.