Why do pollsters take national Presidential polls . . .

. . .when we use the electoral college and therefore elect on a state-by-state basis? Have they totally missed the one big lesson of 2000, which is that the national popular vote has squadoosh to do with who gets elected President?

Yet CNN and Fox and the rest of the bunch keep telling us the national poll results.

I'm simplifying this a bit, but let's say nationally Kerry has 10,000,000 votes and Bush has 9,000,000. Suppose Kerry's 10,000,000 are all located in California, Bush's are spread throughout the other 49 states. Kerry would win California and Bush would win the other 49, winning in a landslide.

D.C.'s Political Report gives a much better picture of how the race is shaping up. It takes results from each state. For now, it shows Kerry with 212 electoral votes, and Bush with 194, with 111 electoral votes too close to call and 21 in states where there are no polls available.

While Kerry is ahead, neither has the 270 needed to win.

It also has a nice color-coded map. I tend to focus on the mint-green battleground states, and to a lesser extent the pink and sky blue states.

Lately, D.C. has changed much of his site to "members only," but this is still publicly available.