Andrew Sullivan is the latest political writer to repeat the unsupported claim that Barack Obama should be winning by a greater margin. He describes Obama as having “stalled in the polls” and then tries to explain “voters’ reluctance to swing behind Obama in landslide numbers.”

Similarly, former Bush pollster Matthew Dowd told the Washington Post that Obama “is underperforming where he should be.”

Contrary to Sullivan and Dowd’s claims, though, the political fundamentals predict a close election in November — leading models forecast Obama getting 51-53% of the two-party vote. And, in fact, the Pollster.com estimate currently shows him getting about 51.4% of the two-party vote in national polls. So he’s not far off from where he “should be” (though, to be clear, the polls at this stage are a relatively poor predictor of the eventual outcome).