Matt Ortega

The website Pollster.com released a great new feature: embeddable, customizable flash polls. Below is an aggregate of live phone interview polls between Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois), Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) with undecideds factored in.

At a moment when the political world is swimming in a flood of polling data, we are pleased to announce a new, fully interactive Flash chart application that will plot all of the poll charts here on Pollster.com. The new charts allow you to:

• Select or limit the polls used to draw trend lines and calculate polling estimates with the “filter” tool. If you don’t like a particular pollster, just un-click and take them out (yes…really).

• Toggle between the display of the default trend line and alternatives that are more or less sensitive using the “smoothing” tool — these are essentially the same as the “steady blue” and “ready red” trend lines often used by Charles Franklin.

• Hold your mouse over any data point to display details about each the poll.

• Click the mouse on any data point to “connect the dots” between all polls fielded by that pollster.

• Modify the date range (x-axis) and percentage range (y-axis) by clicking on either axis directly or with forms found on the “tools” menu.

• Select the candidates you want to see displayed on the chart with the “choices” tool .

• Toggle the display of data points, trend lines and grid lines on or off with the “plot” tools.

• Copy the code necessary to bookmark your customized chart or share it via email with the “URL” tool.

• Get the code necessary to place a small version of the customized chart on your own blog or web site with the “Embed” tool.

(Hat tip: Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic)