A CBS/Pravda/Farmer’s Almanac/“Avatar: The Last Airbender” poll released today indicates that yesterday never happened for seventy-two per cent of all respondents, but, if it had, thirty-two per cent more Independents believe now than just last May that Barack Obama and John McCain are both leading in a race now too lopsided to call. Analysts observed that the poll was taken in a light drizzle at 4 A.M. E.D.T., before the high-income segment is awake, prompting observers to analyze the results as skewing in favor of CBS.

McCain pollsters claimed that the same survey, conducted five minutes after a New Orleans Times-Picayune/Bravo/Popular Mechanics poll among women age twenty to twenty-one who are not men, found that ninety-seven per cent of respondents were too far away to be interviewed. The impact of current economic concerns on Obama’s popularity among bipolar white prison inmates with less than a kindergarten education was not measured, but the person responsible for designing the poll has been fired because prison inmates cannot vote.

Surprising many veteran pollsters as these results were tallied—given that it has yet to be conducted—was a Hartford Courant/CNN/Starbucks poll to be taken by qualified voters who, an earlier ABC/Sacramento Bee/Publishers Clearing House straw poll predicted, expect a win for either the Democrats or the Republicans come November, unless Congress acts. Recent polls show that more women than men believe otherwise, by a majority of at least three to one.

Yet, in answer to the question “Would you go before a firing squad to protect higher pollen counts?,” fewer than .03 per cent of those who identified themselves as likely McCain voters understood the question. By a plurality of four to one and counting, not counting those who did not, the Undecideds squared off in a donnybrook with the Don’t Knows, broken up by the Have No Opinions Worth Mentioning. The I Forgets stood on the sidelines.

In sharp contrast to last year’s similar polling question, conducted by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles for Indiana State University, only seventy-five per cent of respondents this year thought “with certainty” that they were being interviewed. The same seventy-five per cent also reported “moderate to severe” memory loss, a seeming rebuff to the well-financed pro-forgetfulness lobby.

Cheering the Obama camp, particularly after his Middle East visits, a Fox News/Toronto Star/Amway poll, released but not yet caught, charts a severe downturn in support for efforts not to not repeal the NAFTA treaty. But the influence on French public opinion of the marriage of President Nicolas Sarkozy and international hottie Carla Bruni will have to wait until tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the normally reliable Quinnipiac University poll was travelling and was unavailable for comment.