Two Excellent "Where Are We At" Roundups.

A really excellent, heartening update on the polls from Ruy Teixeira over the equally excellent, data-rich Democratic strategist blog. Its very rich, but this is the gist of his points; 

When I last checked in about the state of the race--about ten days ago--things looked pretty good for the Democrats. Now they look even better..... Take the generic congressional contest, for example. In the nine polls finished since 10/20 that are listed on PollingReport.com, the Democrats' average lead is 14 points......National polls continue to confirm a very wide lead for Democrats among independent voters.... The Pew data show huge swings toward the Democrats among many important voter groups including seniors, middle income voters, non-college educated voters, whites, rural residents, married moms, white Catholics--the list goes on and on. In effect, these shifts have turned yesterday's swing voters into Democratic groups and many of yesterday's Republican groups into swing voters.... The political scientists' forecasting model prediction of 32 seats doesn't see so far-fetched in light of these data.....the GOP turnout machine is overrated and is simply not capable of turning defeat into victory in the manner alleged by GOP operatives.....

And - getting completely ahead of ourselves for a minute - the sage political analyst Larry Sabato raises the prospect of a shut out, in which Republicans win nothing at all. And as someone who works in Virginia, i'm taking as significant the fact that Sabato is tipping Jim Webb over George Allen too.

Virginia - Toss-up - Jim Webb (D) will unseat Sen. George Allen (R). Of course we're not counting him out altogether, but Allen's slow self-destruction has been nothing short of breathtaking, and we at the Crystal Ball are still somewhat shocked to find ourselves at the epicenter of the fight for the Senate....

The whole post is excellent, and worth reading.