Meanwhile, we apologize in advance for one more brief service outage that you will encounter at about 9:00 p.m. Eastern time tonight (6:00 p.m. Pacific), as we make some changes to the "tubes" that bring you our site.

And tune in tomorrow (or later tonight) for a whole new Pollster.com...

She starts with the basic finding we have seen on most of the other national surveys, the greater enthusiasm expressed by Obama supporters:

Asked how they feel about the fact that their choice is the party’s nominee, 50 percent of Obama’s current voters say they are “enthusiastic.” Just 16 percent of McCain’s supporters say that about his candidacy. And while more than half of McCain voters are “satisfied” with McCain, 15 percent say they are “dissatisfied” or even “angry” that he is the nominee!

She then points to these critical findings from 2004:

In late July, 2004, even AFTER that year’s Democratic Convention and before the Republicans met, John Kerry’s supporters were a lot less committed to their candidate than supporters of George W. Bush were committed to theirs. Sixty percent of Bush voters said they “strongly” favored their candidate; just 47 percent of Kerry’s supporters said that. There was another motivation for many Kerry voters - 28 percent said they were voting for Kerry mostly because they disliked Bush. Strength-of-support numbers pretty much stayed the same for the rest of the campaign. Even in polls taken just before the 2004 election there wasn’t much difference: 67 percent of Bush voters said they supported him strongly, compared with just 49 percent of Kerry voters. And while 37 percent of likely Republican voters said they would be “excited” by a Bush win, just 24 percent of likely Democratic voters said they would be “excited” by a Kerry victory.

So does an enthusiasm gap matter to turnout? Pointing to similar results from this year's New Hampshire primary, Frankovic says yes. See her full column for details.

Rhodes Cook sees a new electorate in the making.

Jennifer Agiesta examines what increases in African American turnout might mean for Barack Obama in the South.

Patrick Murray responds to David Moore on swing voters.

PPP says the exit polls were wrong about black turnout in South Carolina (and North Carolina too).

Jay Cost reviews past vote returns from Ohio.

Mark Mellman says media accounts are too quick to minimize Barack Obama's lead.

David Hill, risking wrath from the "The Pollsters Protection Union," says we could do with fewer summer polls.

Gary Andres argues that independent-leaners behave like "base" partisans.

Alan Abramowitz argues that Obama's problem with white voters is no worse than previous Democratic candidates.

Chris Cillizza sees evidence of the Obama Clinton scars healing among Democrats.

Dante Scalia examines the McCain New Hampshire "Mystique" in a three part series.

Steven Medvic finds evidence of racial stereotyping in American National Election Study data from 2004 (via Monkey Cage).

Pollsters are continuing to monitor changes in telephone use by the U.S. public, since most surveys are still conducted using only landline telephones. Growing numbers of Americans are reachable only by cell phone, and an even larger number who have both a landline and a cell phone may be "functionally cell-only" because of their phone use habits. The latest Pew Research Center national survey, conducted June 18-29 with a sample of 2,004 adults including 503 on a cell phone, finds that the overall estimate of voter presidential preference is modestly affected by whether or not the cell phone respondents are included. Obama holds a 48% to 40% lead in the sample that includes cell phones, and a 46% to 41% advantage in the landline sample. Estimates of congressional vote are the same in the landline and combined samples. [Emphasis added].

The numbers noted above are based on interviews with registered voters. When they narrow the universe to more likely voters, however, the difference [mostly] disappears:

Narrowing the analysis to voters who are certain about their vote choice, there is almost no difference between the landline and combined samples: Obama has a 38%-28% advantage in the combined sample, while the margin is 38%-30% in the landline sample.

For more detail on the challenge of cell-phone only households to political polling, see my two-part series last year, as well as any of our more recent posts on the subject.

[I added the word "mostly" to my second paragraph based on comments below. The report does not speak to the statistical significance of either set of numbers].