This poll seems like a pretty big deal, because if as many voters come to the polls as is expected, Obama wins big.

MSNBC has more analysis…

• According to the survey, new and lapsed voters (those who didn’t vote in 2004) back Obama over McCain by a 2-to-1 margin, 61%-30%.
• If you take the Bush (62 million) and Kerry (59 million) vote totals from 2004, assume turnout increases by 20 million additional voters (about what it did in 2004), and assume Obama wins these additional voters 2-to-1, then Obama would best McCain nationally by more than three million voters, 72.4 million to 68.7 million.
• But if turnout increases by just 10 million, then the numbers become Obama 65.7 million, McCain 65.3 million — a virtual tie.

So, a new generation of voter HEAVILY favors Obama. While this isn’t necessarily surprising, one must note that these Gen Yers are very different than their Gen Xer counterparts. Ask any advertising professional and they’ll tell you that the Gen Y consumer actually thinks they can make a difference, whereas the Gen X crowd is much more apathetic. So it only makes sense that not only do they favor a candidate that offers “Hope” and “Change” as their core message, but also that Obama can count on more of them coming out to vote.

Obviously we don’t what’ll happen come election time, but between this news, the new electoral projections and word that polling outfits may not be capturing the voting preferences of cell phone users effectively, overall voter preference is trending towards Obama in a big way.

Another key swing state poll shows it up for grabs.

Here are some gender breakdowns…

Gender – Male
McCain – 56%
Obama – 39%

Gender – Female
Obama – 59%
McCain – 34%

As we can see, Obama and McCain are taking women and men by fairly large margins, but McCain has 8 more points to make up among women than Obama has among men. And I’m not exactly sure how John plans to do that, especially given the Supreme Court question mark around Roe v. Wade.

And age breaks out as such…

Age – 18 to 49
Obama – 53%
McCain – 43%

Age – 50+
McCain – 47%
Obama – 45%

Nothing surprising here, although Obama is keeping it much closer in the older age bracket than usual. Still, Iowa is where he launched his historic upset, so it’s understandable that these olders votes may be more inclined to see what he’s all about as a President.

Now, you ready for this? Here comes the biggest shocker, and it’s about race…

Race – Caucasian
Obama – 50%
McCain – 44%

Race – African American
McCain – 55%
Obama – 45%

That’s right. McCain is leading Obama among African Americans.

Now, to put this in the proper perspective, Caucasians make up 95% of the population in Iowa, while African Americans only make up 2%, but this is still an interesting anomaly when we talk about Obama having a lock on the black vote.

More as it develops…

What else am I to make of stories like this one, where older Jewish voters think he’s in league with al Qaeda?

Because of a dispute over moving the date of the state’s primary, Obama and the other Democratic candidates did not campaign in Florida. But in his absence, novel and exotic rumors about Obama have flourished. Among many older Jews, and some younger ones, as well, he has become a conduit for Jewish anxiety about Israel, Iran, anti-Semitism and race.

Obama is Arab, Jack Stern’s friends told him in Aventura. (He’s not.)

He is a part of Chicago’s large Palestinian community, suspects Mindy Chotiner of Delray. (Wrong again.)

Wright is the godfather of Obama’s children, asserted Violet Darling in Boca Raton. (No, he’s not.)

Al Qaeda is backing him, said Helena Lefkowicz of Fort Lauderdale (Incorrect.)

Michelle Obama has proven so hostile and argumentative that the campaign is keeping her silent, said Joyce Rozen of Pompano Beach. (Michelle Obama campaigns frequently, drawing crowds in her own right.)

He might fill his administration with followers of Louis Farrakhan, worried Sherry Ziegler. (Extremely unlikely, given his denunciation of Farrakhan.)

And as I’ve mentioned in the past, my own grandfather has bought into this nonsense, and it’s taken multiple talks with him to get through to him.

What’s more, older voters often tend to trust their friends much more than other sources, and once you get that rumor mill cranking, there’s not much you can do to stop it.

But here’s an additional thing I know about older folks…they watch that awful show Judge Judy…A LOT. So it’s almost as if Obama needs to make multiple commercials where he speaks directly into the camera, debunks each one of these rumors and run those constantly on Judge Judy and any other “judge” show that plays during the early evening hours.

Or he can just ignore this noise and hope for the best.

I’d go with the Judge Judy strategy…

To be fair, I haven’t read My Beautiful Mommy, but still…that title is pretty bad.

If this is just a book about the idea that “mommy” is going to have some work done and how to explain it to a kid, that’s one thing. But if it’s more of a story about “transformation” from normal to “beautiful,” well, that seems incredibly unethical to me.

From Newsweek:

What’s the market for a children’s picture book about moms getting cosmetic surgery? No one specifically tracks the number of tummy-tuck-and-breast-implant combos (or “mommy makeovers,” as they’re called), but according to the latest numbers from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, breast augmentation was the most popular cosmetic surgery procedure last year, with 348,000 performed (up 6 percent over 2006). Of those, about one-third were for women over 40 who often opt for implants to restore lost volume in their breasts due to aging or pregnancy weight gain. There were 148,000 tummy tucks—up 1 percent from the previous year.

Salzhauer got the idea for a book after noticing that women were coming into his office with their kids in tow. He says that mysterious doctor’s visits can be frightening for children. “Parents generally tend to go into this denial thing. They just try to ignore the kids’ questions completely.” But, he adds, children “fill in the blanks in their imagination” and then feel worse when they see “mommy with bandages,” he says. “With the tummy tucks, [the mothers] can’t lift anything. They’re in bed. The kids have questions.”

Here’s one doctor’s understandably snarky response…

First, let’s consider toddlers’ views on what makes a person beautiful. Let’s be honest, isn’t it annoying how clueless they are of true standards of beauty? All children seem to think, for example, that their moms are beautiful, even if she has a big nose or sagging skin…or worse.

I ask you: is this a healthy viewpoint? If we don’t teach our toddlers otherwise, won’t they take this misguided view of beauty into later childhood, even adulthood? Imagine the consequences to society if everyone was considered beautiful in his/her own way.

And should we be praising toddlers for how they look, when they invariably possess offensive pot bellies and gross rolls of ‘baby fat’? Give me a break. Who really likes a big fat stomach on any human of any age? You don’t like one on yourself, why should you on a child? Imagine the let-down in store for them when their cherished jelly bellies become objects of ridicule by their peers!

Agreed. Reinforcing artificial standards of beauty so early in life with a book like this is nothing more than clever marketing.

This bother anybody else?

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows 72% of those surveyed say voters are ready to elect a qualified black candidate, 18% say they’re not. Meanwhile, 71% say Americans are ready to vote for a woman, 20% say they’re not. But only 61% say the voters are prepared to vote for a person over 70, while 29% say they’re not. Not exactly encouraging numbers for McCain and the Republicans.

Who knew? Apparently there is more bias against old people than against African Americans or women. Then again, only one of those groups has an increased chance of dying in office. And that’s really what these results show, right? People are worried that John McCain will croak. Or maybe they think he’ll have a senior moment and launch a nuclear attack when he meant to just page his secretary.

While these numbers aren’t good for McCain, I’m even more disturbed to see that a full one fifth of Americans are so racist and/or sexist as to reject a qualified candidate solely because of their race or gender. I guess prejudices change slowly and one fifth is probably a lot fewer bigots than you would have found even 25 years ago, let alone 50 years ago.

First, Reuters has their dreary spin on a Harris Interactive poll:

Only 22 percent of people responding to the poll said they read blogs regularly, meaning several times a month or more, according to the survey conducted by Harris Interactive. [...]

Despite the attention blogs can get, the poll said 56 percent of Americans say they never read blogs that discuss politics. Another 23 percent read them several times a year, the survey showed.

While blogs are largely considered the realm of young people who are most Internet-savvy, only 19 percent of people ages 18 to 31, and 17 percent of those ages 32 to 43, regularly read a political blog, the poll said.

So who is reading them?

The generation most likely to read such blogs are those age 63 or older, 26 percent of whom said they do so. Also, 23 percent of those ages 44 to 62 read them, the poll said.

Hey Google, maybe you should automagically place some AARP ads on the site…

Okay, here’s the thing…I actually think the poll reveals that there are A LOT of people reading political blogs. Seriously.

Time for some quick math. The American population is roughly 300 million people. About 73% of that group is over the age of 20, which roughly translates into 219 million people. Now, it’s obvious people younger than 20 read blogs (as the survey shows), but I’m still going to work with that 216M number. So I’ll take 22% of 219M, which gives me approximately 48 million people. If that’s the number of people reading blogs a few times a month, well, that’s a pretty big number, don’t you think?

So instead of a headline that reads, “Poll: Most Americans don’t read political blogs,” it should probably read, “Poll: 48 million Americans read political blogs regularly.”

But hey, somebody check my math on this. I could very well be wrong.

Where’s Patrick Ruffini when you need him?