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A recent poll from American Crossroads has been burning up the internet. The toplines are certainly sexy. GOP pollster Public Opinion Strategies polled 13 competitive Senate seats: Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington. It found that the Republican candidate led 47%-39% overall, led 45%-37% in the five Republican-held seats, and led 47%-40% in the eight Democratic-held seats.

But there are a couple of problems with this poll. First, even if the GOP swept these races (plus the "gimme" in North Dakota), they would hold just fifty Senate seats, one short of what is needed for control of the Senate.

More importantly, not all competitive races are created equal. Let's look at the Democratic seats. The RCP Averages for these races (or latest poll if RCP has not averaged the race) presently show, respectively, GOP leads of 25, 1, 9, 2, 21, -2.2, 2, and -3.5 points. Sure enough, when you average these races, you come up with a 6.8 point GOP lead, almost exactly what POS found. But if you remove two races where the GOP candidate has huge leads (Arkansas and Indiana), the GOP lead shrinks to just 1.4 points.

And note that the GOP candidate is actually trailing in two of those races as well. That doesn't mean that the GOP doesn't have a shot there -- far from it -- it just means that the polls right now are actually showing Republicans on track to pick up four Senate seats from Democrats, with another four or five Democratic seats incredibly close.

The same is true of the Republican seats polled. In Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio, the GOP's average lead in the RCP Averages is 3.5 points, somewhat smaller than what POS found. But that assumes that you are counting Charlie Crist as a Democrat; POS may have assumed something different.

In any event, there is once again a pretty wide discrepancy in the state of these races. The GOP is favored to hold onto New Hampshire, Kentucky, and increasingly Missouri. But Ohio is no better than a coin toss right now, and Charlie Crist, who may caucus with the Democrats, is the slight favorite in Florida.

"Big picture polls" such as this one are entertaining, but ultimately have to be watched closely. Unless they are carefully crafted and deliver truly shocking news, like the NPR poll from two months ago, they should always be used with extreme caution.