As other commenters on this site seem to be wondering about this, the Diageo/Hotline presidential poll of 10/8 has caught my attention. I am trying to understand some of the numbers behind their determination that, even after all this bad economic news, Obama leads McCain by only 45-44% among likely voters. I am not questioning the methodology of the poll (others are more qualified than myself to do that), but after some analysis of the numbers being reported, my suspicions have been aroused. Therefore, some investigation into who is actually conducting the poll is what I am concerned with. Here is a link to the PDF of the poll itself:

http://www.diageohotlinepoll.com/documen ts/diageohotlinepoll/DiageoHotlineTracke r100808release.pdf

The poll shows that since last week, Obama's numbers have dropped on EVERY MEASURE, even after a disastrous week for the economy, which the poll itself clearly states is the number 1 issue for 62% of voters. In fact, the poll declares Obama and McCain TIED at 42% on who would do the best job handling the economy, which seems to run completely against every other poll I've seen. This includes poll numbers coming out of the 10/7 debates.