I Love Polls Way Too Much

I think my parents are right: I am into politics in a little too much. Today, we had more than 20 polls come out for the national contest, presidential state numbers, Senate contests, and even House races, and it felt like Christmas (Hanukkah really, since I am Jewish) morning or wild card of divisional weekend in football (easily the two best weekends of NFL season, as the games are usually the most competitive) for me as I was in pure rapture getting fresh poll and fresh poll and reading as many cross-tabs as I could get my hands on.

I found myself frantically scouring through the dozens of political sites I peruse looking to see if any of them had uncovered a fresh poll before I had. National tracking poll? Mississippi Senate race? North Carolina Governor's contest? Doesn't matter. It has come to the point that when Dailykos announced that it was going to commission a daily presidential tracking poll -- with included cross-tabs (quite a rarity as most firms make you pay for that data) -- and dozens of other Senate and House polls until November 4, I actually e-mailed Kos to thank him. The news was literally the highlight of my week.

While I am naturally following some contests much more than others, as everyone knows I am obsessed with data. Nothing should be more valuable to a political junkie than pure, unvarnished information. Sure, some polling outfits (Rasmussen, Mason Dixon) are better than others (Zogby), and a lot of polls are internal campaign ones (Anzalone, Strategic Vision) so they have a stake in their numbers, but all of that is okay, as just about any (credible) data is valuable and informative.

So, as we get closer and closer to the election, and more and more polls are released by the day, I don't know if I can handle all of the excitement.

Yes, I really need a life and a girlfriend.