Polls are (mostly) useless, until you aggregate them.

Chicago Tribune talks up about the early polls, showing a wide swath of disparity from Obama +9 to Romney +5.  These broad polls are practically meaningless by themselves, and anyway it's so early in the season that people in the soft middle have no idea what they're going to do.

But when all of the polls put all together as you might find at Real Clear Politics, you can observe significant trends.

Some might suggest that the trend shows the gap is closing; I think otherwise, because again, those people would be focused too narrowly on the short-term, and only projecting what they want to see.

Looking at the last several months - or even the past 14 - Romney has only breached the 46% poll average twice, and has otherwise remained below Obama's numbers.  Look closely at the current RCP tracking -- even when the economy was worse off early last year compared to today, Obama was solidly leading Romney (and all other Republican candidates).  It was not even close.

To get further perspective, just look back at the 2008 election.

Quickly, you can see that McCain had trouble breaching the 46% poll average in the final 14 months prior to the General Election, and towards the end, Obama's margin widened, en route to a landslide.

If you look further back to the 2004 election, you can see what a closer election looks like, in the run-up to November.

You see how, from early on Bush and Kerry swung back and forth in large shifts?  You see none of that in the current election season.

Romney's fighting a massive, uphill battle.