God Bless Alan Abramowitz

During the "dog days of summer" of an election year, filling 24-hour news networks and political blogs leads to extreme reactions to nothing. In political science we speak of "noise" in data, particularly polling data. And it is our duty as political scientists to bring a bit of sanity to it all. Today the job was done by Alan Abramowitz from Emory University via The Huntingtonpost.com.

Go watch baseball; go fishing; go to a movie; or go find Brett Favre a team. The real political race resumes on August 28 when Barack Obama gives his convention speech to impossibly high expectations. All before that, including VP picks, is very, very unlikely to matter in November. And I include Paris Hilton's greatest contribution to society.