Here you get to separate the chaff

When friends who do not spend most of their time obsessing over American politics ask me to recommend a one-stop shop for election-watching, I always know where to send them: realclearpolitics.com. The site is what webheads call an aggregator: it produces very little original content, but gathers in commentary and data from all over the political map.

As election day approaches (in the US), I have found myself looking at the site more and more frequently, even as the ways in which I use it change. So while I want to use this space to offer readers and viewers some hints for viewing the final stretch of this election, a good bit of that advice is going to be cautionary.

Back in the old days (say, March) I'd start my mornings by clicking through to half-a-dozen or so of the political stories that appear as links in the centre of each day's RCP homepage. I now spend far more time clicking in the box on the right hand side of the page where the links to polling data are located.

It's not that I dislike political commentary - on the contrary, I love it. But as election day approaches, and with the race remaining relatively tight, much of the available commentary has become so predictably partisan as to be almost useless (save as a guide to what the true believers on either side are thinking at any given moment).

Don't get me wrong. Understanding any election requires absorbing a certain amount of partisan bilge. It is useful to know where true believers think their respective sides are (or ought to be). Like all good things, however, this is best enjoyed in moderation.

For the overseas reader trying to follow the race, however, this can pose special problems. Even Americans who pay very little attention to politics know that the Weekly Standard and National Review are conservative/GOP shills whose liberal/Democrat counterparts are The Nation and The American Prospect.

Again, there is nothing wrong with partisan commentary per se, the trick is to know what you are getting. Readers who live on the other side of the world may be less familiar with where America's domestic political battle lines are drawn.

This brings us to the other thing RCP is really useful for: data. When you can't find (or lack the time to search out) lots of passion-free analysis, the thing to do is to ignore the links and spend one's time exploring the site's ridiculously comprehensive trove of polls and polling data.

Educated guesses

RCP breaks polls down both nationally and by state. The latter is a key resource since November 4 involves not a single national vote but rather 51 separate state elections. It also offers helpful graphics that put individual polls in context and make trends easier to spot.

While we are on the subject, it is worth taking a moment to recall what polls are and what they are not. Over the years polling has become ever more scientific, but that does not alter one crucial fact: polls are not authoritative decrees about what will happen. They are educated guesses about what may come to pass. Even when they prove to be dead on, they are still only snapshots of a particular moment in time.

It is also worth remembering that the current US election cycle is proving especially challenging for pollsters. Race, obviously, is an issue: will white voters lie to pollsters out of a desire not to appear to be bigots?

Technology, however, has also emerged as a potential problem. Approximately 17 per cent of Americans have abandoned landlines, meaning most pollsters cannot reach them since most polls are conducted by telephone and US law bars pollsters from placing calls to mobiles.

Finally, it is also worth remembering that any major development usually takes a day or two to register with the country at large. Since polls are often conducted over a two-day period, the result is that something like Tuesday's McCain-Obama debate may not really show up in the surveys until the following Saturday or Sunday.

Yes, I've said this before... but watch and wait. After all, this year American politics is the best show out there.

Gordon Robison is a journalist and consultant based in Burlington, Vermont. He has lived in and reported on the Middle East for two decades, including assignments in Baghdad for both CNN and Fox News.