On the heels of a Washington Post/ABC News poll showing President Obama's approval ratings slipping on front-burner issues, a Public Policy Polling survey conducted July 15-16 saw his overall job approval rating drop from 50 percent to 43 percent with 7 percent undecided. (The Post/ABC poll still had Obama's overall rating at 59 percent to 37 percent).

Obama's rating in PPP polls had been 55 percent in May and 52 percent in June.

The poll did hypothetical match-ups with Obama pitted against four Republicans for 2012. Obama bested all of them in the PPP survey, but a Rasmussen Reports poll had less favorable news for Obama.

President Obama's job performance continues to meet with approval from most Americans, according to a poll released Friday by American Research Group (ARG). But his numbers settled a bit from previous very high levels as Obama addressed a multiplicity of problems related to the nation's economic downturn.

The survey of 1,100 adults nationally showed 56 percent approved of Obama's job performance while 37 percent disapproved and 7 percent were undecided.

While that put Obama's net approval rating at plus-19, that was a slip from plus-27 -- 60 percent to 33 percent -- in a February ARG poll.

The more recent ARG survey, taken March 16-19, coincided with a rough patch for Obama. His administration faced angry questions from many quarters about the origin of an obscure provision in the economic stimulus package enacted in February, which left the door open for financially crippled insurance industry giant AIG, the recipient of billions of dollars in federal bailout money, to pay millions of dollars of bonuses to its executives.

The Pew Research Center and Rasmussen Reports topped the list of pollsters for accuracy in their final projections for the presidential campaign, according to a study by political scientist Costas Panagopoulos of Fordham University.

Panagopoulos said that "for all the derision directed toward pre-election polling, the final poll estimates were not far off from the actual nationwide voteshares for the two candidates," Panagopoulos said. "On average, pre-election polls from 23 public polling organizations projected a Democratic advantage of 7.52 percentage points on Election Day, which is only about 1.37 percent points away" from Obama's 6.15 margin in the popular vote.

There has been a lot of musings about polls recently ranging from the proliferation of them, what their impact is on the political process and speculation about how accurate they are, especially with the first black candidate for President in the race. So, we thought we'd give you a sampling:

New Republic: How Many Polls Does it Take to Screw Up an Election?

This new, frenetic age of polling has not necessarily led to more empirical certainty. The very instantaneousness of polls threatens to shape perceptions as much as record them. And the deluge of polling data has just given partisans another opportunity to cherry-pick facts and impugn their rivals. In this besieged environment, even pollsters themselves fight bitterly over the best way to measure public opinion and whether some of them have it exactly right--or very, very wrong.

The New York Times and the Washington Post both had stories today on the "Bradley Effect," named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley who lost his race for California governor in 1982 even though polls had forecast a victory. The lingering question with the first black candidate for President currently leading in the polls: do voters tell the truth to pollsters when race is involved.

New York Times: Do Polls Lie About Race?

In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey -- widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed -- that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome. He is, of course, about six points ahead in current polls. See? He's going to lose.

Washington Post: Pollsters Debate "Bradley Effect"

Most experts say they do not believe that the phenomenon, known as the "Bradley effect," is at work in this election. But some disagree. And if the effect has disappeared, it is not clear whether that is because polling techniques have improved or because the country has become more tolerant about race.

For those of you really into the subject of polling, the "Numbers Guy" who writes a blog on - you guessed it - "the way numbers are used, and abused" has a piece on "interactive voice response" or IVR polls which, in English, means surveys that are automated. Numbers are automatically dialed, and responses solicited to questions asked in a recorded message. As Numbers Guy, Carl Bialik, notes, these are obviously cheaper than the live-interview surveys such as Gallup's.

Many pollsters and media organizations have qualms about this kind of polling and many news organizations won't touch them, such as ABC News whose polling policy prohibits use of "pre-recorded autodialed surveys, even when a random-digit dialed telephone sample is employed."

The point of Bialik's post is to ask why, given that they have "solid record of forecasting election results."

In Poll Tracker, two of the pollsters who use IVRs are Public Policy Polling and SurveyUSA. If you want to hear what their recorded message sounds like, click on their names.