John, I know, but national polls of the
popular vote are used as a innacurate measure of
what might be happening in all the swing states, particularly if the samples are selected to be somehow representative of the country. Obviously they are not much good for that, but there are probably more of them than state polls, and they probably have more consistent methodologies, so it's not surprising that people use them that way.

The electoral vote projections are all over the place as well. I'd like to see a poll to find out how many registered voters know the difference.