Polling Problem?

Rasmussen says that Barack is leading by 5 points, Zogby says he's up by 6%, and Gallup says the same. So why does the new New York Times poll put Obama up by 14, while the LA Times has him up 9%?

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is entering the third and final presidential debate Wednesday with a wide lead over Republican rival John McCain nationally, a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows.

The Obama-Biden ticket now leads the McCain-Palin ticket 53 percent to 39 percent among likely voters, a 14-point margin. One week ago, prior to the Town Hall debate that uncommitted voters saw as a win for Obama, that margin was just three points.

And which polls do you think will get the media attention over the next day or two?

Opinions of the candidates could still change, and potential trouble spots remain for Obama, among them the fact that small percentages of voters cite Obama's past associations with Bill Ayers (9 percent) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright (11 percent) as issues that bother them.

Also bothersome is the fact that the networks tend to report their own polls as breaking news, and don't mention any of the others. They also fail to mention when their's aren't lining up with the results that the major pollsters are coming up with.

But with more than four out of five of each candidate’s supporters now saying their minds are made up, the poll suggests that McCain faces serious challenges as he looks to close the gap on his Democratic rival in the final three weeks of the campaign.