Wait, seriously? Pollsters don't call cell phone users?

So... just when I had almost been convinced that Obama's lead in the polls was not merely some figment of our collective liberal imagination, and that we might in fact be headed not only toward victory, but perhaps toward some sort of colossal land slide (yes, that blue state sandwiched between Ohio and Illinois would be Indianna) where even Arizona is no longer completely safe for McCain, a poll comes out showing Obama ahead in Minnesota by a scant five points in a St. Cloud State University survey. More terrifying still is the fact that the poll shows him ahead 42-37 - is this really suggesting that 21% of Minnesotans are actually undecided or voting for third party candidates? To my relief, the poll appears to have been taken from 10/14 to 10/22 and the two more recent polls by Rasmussen and Big10 Battleground show Obama's lead comfortably into the double digits (with him receiving well over half the vote). However, the most perplexing part of the entire thing remains the fact that 15% of those polled on the St. Cloud survey were cell phone users (apparently no one else has picked up on the fact that most people who graduated high school or college in the post-cell phone era never bothered to get landlines). So, the one poll that actually talks to a representative sample of 18-30 year olds is the one who shows a shrinking lead for Obama? Confusing to say the least (although, evidently the cell phone users polled did strongly prefer Obama). But who knows, maybe McCain will manage to pull in the youth vote after all.

Meanwhile, although Gallup and Rasmussen are finally showing Obama to be pulling even farther ahead in the polls, the Reuters/Zogby/CSPAN poll shows that his lead has shrunk from 10% to 5%. Anyway, my faith in all of these groups has been so severely undermined by their inability to take into account the telephonic preferences of my generation that perhaps I should just start ignoring the polls altogether, the way McCain seems to be doing.

But the most important development for the Obama campaign in this week of surprise endorsements is, of course, the one he received from the New York Times on Thursday. Never saw that one coming (but apparently Obama is only the eight straight Democrat the Times has endorsed for presidency, so you know, must have been a close call).