I know many AT readers are sick of polls or worse, believe them to be rigged. Believe me, we understand. The horse race aspect to politics can be both confusing and disheartening. And, as we write constantly, many polls are in fact designed to elicit a specific result. We try and warn you when we believe that occurs but even those results say something about the state of the race.

Campaigns do not use the kinds of polls we talk about here except in the grossest sense. Internal polling by campaigns goes much deeper than "yes or no" or which candidate the respondent supports. They generally deal with voter's perceptions - how they are feeling about the candidates, what disturbs them, what encourages them. The strategists then take this broad outline of America and craft a specific message, targeting the feelings of voters.

Today, Gallup's daily tracking poll has Obama's lead shrinking from 6 to 4 over John McCain while Rasmussen has Obama up by 1. It is probable that once again, the candidate who received a bounce as a result of an external event such as the financial crisis on Wall Street is seeing that bump fade and the race tightening up again.

AT's Political Correspondent Rich Baehr says that what is of interest is that "battleground state polls have not moved as much as national polls last few days. Sure enough, a new Ohio poll shows John McCain still narrowly ahead of Obama despite McCain's precipitous slide in the national polls.

The first debate this Friday will be crucial of course. But do not get discouraged when the MSM spins and spins and spinsuntil they end up saying Obama won no matter what happens. John Kerry supposedly "won" all the debates in 2004 and yet we never had to watch him "reporting for duty" as our Commander in Chief.

The good sense and fairness of the American people should never be underestimated.