Is Gallup in the HotTub with the McSurge bunch?

C'mon, admit it. You only care about polls when your guy, your cause, your whatever is doing well. I know that's my stance, even though I faithfully visit Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.com even though I have little clue what I'm actually looking at.

But, I learned something about poll data yesterday and I gotta thank KO for it. I learned what "LV" and "RV" means. It was one of those a-ha moments - like figuring out what H/T and O/T means in the blogosphere - ok, so I haven't figured out H/T yet, but I'm working on it.

Anyway, LV is Likely Voters and RV is Registered Voters. So, now I feel like I know what I'm looking at when I visit RCP and you can, too.

So, this morning there was a Gallup geek on MSNBC with one of the cable desk clerks and she was talking about yesterday's USA Today/Gallup (LV) poll showing McSurge up by 4 and the Gallup Tracking (RV) poll showing Obama up by 6. Why are those 2 Gallup polls so different the desk clerk asks and the Gallup geek said he wasn't sure but it was probably 'cuz they were run about the same time! She tries to pin him down (maybe she knows LV and RV, too), but he ain't having any of it. He keeps repeating that it's due to two polls being run at about the same time. Never once does he tell us that it's two entirely different polls and that the RV one showing Obama up by 6 is the more reliable of the two in that it involves registered voters instead of just likely voters.

This is a crazy insignificant bit of drivel, but it seems everybody else beat me to their own blogs with all of my other good post ideas for the day.

Peace