The polls are always thus during the US horse race season. It is about generating heat (advertising, ratings, etc for MSM), not light.

As to the mud slinging, honestly, what a bunch of thin skinned whiners. Suddenly politics in America is full of sweet smelling delicate flowers, and we aren't supposed to engage in critical debating?

What a crock of shit, I say.

As to what polling do I pay attention to--the Pew Research polls. They go deeper than the current mood of the minute, and the whimsy of voters blowing in the wind.

I too, wish to see a more progressive US, but I know it will not happen at the level of the presidency, because it never does. The way I view this election cycle is, with all 3 of the current mainstream party candidates, that the next president of the US will look like John Majors did to Margaret Thatcher.

The mood of the country hasn't shifted significantly enough to see Republicans decisively swept from power, the way Blair & Labor did when they won those few years back.

The other thing that must be understood is the corporate plutocracy that now has it's stranglehold on most the Western democracies, has corrupted the political systems of so many countries that elections in one country truly have very little effect. The status quo of the global corporate plutocracy pretty well has it sewn up.