Okay, been using the Gallup poll for consistency, but should point out that other polls are not necessarily showing Sarah Palin overwhelming the race at the moment.

 In fact, a new CNN poll shows the race a dead heat, with 48 percent of respondents saying they're backing each ticket.

What would be particularly interesting in that poll would be the fact that the undecided vote there is only now three percent.

This poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 percent. The polling was done over the weekend.

CNN polling director Keating Holland explains that part of the very small undecided number is the fact that their questioners are trained not to accept "don't know" easily. Instead, he said, respondents are very politely to encouraged to talk their way through their thoughts and see if they really have made a choice.

But, he said, the other side of that is that with a long (into June) primary season, heavy summer political ads and two very late conventions, poeple have been playing a lot of attention. In the days after conventions past, they had a lot more than two months before the vote.

"This year, we've got a ton of people who haven't made up their mind 100 percent, but who have been thinking about the race a lot and are pretty sure," he said. He said a part of the poll to be released tomorrow will explain that about 10 percent of those who've said they're decided also consider themselves "still convinceable."

CNN also notes that when combined with Gallup's tracking polling (done at the same time) and the Diageo/Hotline survey, McCain is up a single point, 47 percent to 46 percent. CNN noted that was the first time the combined polls indicated McCain had more support than Obama.

So, the caveats: They're simply polls. It's September. Palin is very new to the race, and as such should be expected to generate a lot of excitement.

Still, it's hard to look at this data and not see a tight race, and a wild dash to election day.