Don't Answer the Phone

Here’s the question everyone is asking:

Could the polls be wrong?

And here’s the hope behind the question:

Sen. John McCain and his allies say that they are. The country, they say, could be headed to a 2008 version of the famous 1948 upset election, with McCain in the role of Harry S. Truman and Sen. Barack Obama as Thomas E. Dewey, lulled into overconfidence by inaccurate polls.

Problem is, back in 1948 Gallup was about the only national pollster around. And he didn’t even bother to poll in the last week of the election. Today, we’ve got tons of polls — and (you’d hope) much improved methodology coming from the added 60 years of experience.