The Ace of Spades blog writes something interesting about last minute polling which is showing Republicans "suddenly" ahead. I'd guess he is correct in his suspicions.
There is a very strong suspicion among poll analysts and critics.
They talk about major pollsters deliberately publishing polls they know for a fact oversample Democrats and are therefore just wrong, in order to please their clients.
But then, right before the election, in the last poll before voting starts, they suddenly publish a poll showing the GOP in a much better position.
Suddenly, the Democrat oversampling they've been doing for months just poof! vanishes.
And why do they do this? Because, when people rank pollster's accuracy, they usually only look at the last poll conducted before the election.
Ace goes on to cite several examples of this, if you're interested. Another explanation is that late in the game many pollsters switch from polling "registered voters" to polling "likely voters." Pay more attention to polls which only survey "likely" voters.
All things being equal, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to vote. A fact about which my father - a lifelong Southern Democrat who died before they all became Republicans - never tired of complaining.
