A quick bit about polling and then I'll do some news aggregation.

The more I use Real Clear Politics' poll aggreagtor, the more I dislike it. They use two right-leaning trackers, Rasmussen and IBD, but exclude Ipsos/Reuters. And I don't know if they'll include PPP's brand-spanking-new three day tracker, which will be infinitely more useful than Rasmussen's. Now we've got perhaps the best pollster in the country doing a three day sensitive and quick (but noisy) tracker, a very solid mid-range 4-5 tracker from very credible Ipsos/Reuters, and an increasingly laughable long-range 7-day tracker from Gallup.

Yes, folks, Gallup thinks Mitt Romney is leading by 7 points today. And the entire polling analysis world probably thinks Gallup is running its reputation into the ground. It's not even who is winning there, it's that it's such a wicked outlier. No other national non-tracking poll has Romney up by more than 4 points, and that was PPP, a Democratic pollster doing a poll for Daily Kos/SEIU. Of the last seven non-tracker national polls, Romney lead by 4 and 3 points, and Obama lead all the rest between 1 and 3 points.

That's worth either a very tiny Obama lead (0.10 points), well within the static, or a dead heat between October 7th and 15th.

The trackers a split too. Between RAND, PPP, Rasmussen, Ipsos/Reuters, IBD/TIPP, and Gallup, Obama leads by 0.12 points.

I'm sure you'll be hearing lots more about Gallup's trip on the crazy train soon.

Anyway, RCP only has three trackers on it and right now, all three have credibility problems. And after looking at Pollster's aggregator, I've found that RCP only shows half the polls that Pollster does. But Pollster doesn't update from the trackers every single day, they do them end-to-end. So a new Rasmussen entry only shows up once every three days, Gallup every seven, and so on. Despite the fact that these trackers all give the latest average every day.

So I made my own, displayed as an image below because Newsvine is still stuck on the stone age, and you can see it on Google Docs as a spreadsheet right here. I took all the polls from Pollster back to about the conventions, to show the dominating lead that Barack Obama had, so that that could be contrasted to the bounce that Mitt Romney got after the first debate. And of course to what's going on right now.

Because there are now five trackers, I've separated them out from the other polls so that you've got a clearer picture of the state of things. The trackers will be updated every day and you can see the date range for each one so you know what each number will mean. I'll also update the main list every day.

And now the news..

- Republicans aren't the only people in the world complaining about media bias. The Taliban think it sucks, too.

- Connecticut: Obama 51%, Romney 37%; Murphy (D) 44%, McMahon (R) 38%.

- Obama 65.7% (+0.9) chance to win with Nate Silver, as of last night.

- I've personally seen lots of Republicans on Newsvine that think Romney crushed Obama in debate #2, and that Romney crushed Obama on Libya. Check the blinders at the door, folks. Obama won the debate by all snap polls, and Romney is dumping Libya on the trail.

- Romney wants employers to coerce their employees into voting for him.

- 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage when it comes to benefits and other legal rights that opposite-marriage people enjoy. That's the sixth straight court to strike down DOMA, and the last I heard, House Republicans had already burned through every dollar of the $1.5 million in your tax payer dollars they gave themselves to try to defend the law.

If every court and appeals court goes that way, the Supreme Court would have to make up a pretty good excuse to take appeals. Before John Roberts instituted this level of interventionism, it was standard practice that the court would only consider appeals in issues where the lower courts were divided.

- TPM updated its electoral college projection to Obama 253, Romney 237. That's... unrealistic, to put it nicely.

- Ann Romney says Mitt will pull a Sarah Palin if he loses. Because a quitter is really what America needs right now.

- (link) Colorado: Obama +3, Florida: Obama +3, Michigan: Obama +3, Ohio: Obama +1, Virginia: Obama +1

- Florida: Obama +4

- A possible new GOP voter registration scandal brewing in tied Virginia. That's in addition to Florida, two critical swing states. How, again, do voter ID laws help stop this?

- Romney pulling out of North Carolina due to confidence they'll win there. Last 10 polls, old to new: Tie, Romney +4, Obama +2, Romney +4, +9, +3, Obama +1, Romney +1, +2, +6. Average only Romney +2.6.

- After one of Mitt Romney's sons said he wanted to physically assault the President of the United States: "If Beau Biden had said he felt like rushing the stage and socking Paul Ryan we'd never hear the end of it." (link)

- Bill Clinton goes there: "GOP has tried to keep unemployment high for political gain"

- Andrea Mitchell goes there: "Men at MSNBC make more money"

- Maryland referendum on legalizing same-sex marriage: Favor 52%, Oppose 43%.

- Maryland's version of the DREAM Act up 59-35.

- Obama is starting to campaign hard on the economic recovery. People have been practically threatening him to do this.

- Nine states back a constitutional convention to overturn Citizens United. Fun fact: the states can call a convention without Congress acting first.

Update
Nate Silver addresses Gallup going way out a limb. Spoiler: this isn't the first time they've blown it.