Today's Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll has Obama leading McCain 50-43. All trackers are data from three days prior to posting, with the R2K numbers from today (yesterday's numbers in parentheses) and the other trackers from yesterday (previous day's data). LV=likely voter, RV=registered voter.
Obama McCain MoE +/- RV/LV
Today
Research 2000: 50 (50) 43 (43) 3 LV
Reuters/Zogby: 48 (48) 45 (44) 2.8 LV
Rasmussen: 51 (50) 45 (46) 2 LV
Diageo/Hotline: 48 (49) 41 (42) 3.4 LV
Gallup: 52 (50) 42 (42) 2 RV See also the LV I and LV II numbers
Yesterday
IBD/TIPP: 47 (46) 40 (41) 3.3 LV alternate link
On successive individual days in the R2K poll (different than the topline, which is a combined three day sample), Obama was up +6 Thurs, +7 Fri and +7 Sat. Today's polling will reflect the debate (all of the sample is post-debate).
With a few more days of data, we can better gauge where we are, though as of now, this looks to be a stable position. Obama has been at 50 or more since 9/29 (see top graph). Obama continues in the 48 to 50 51- 52 range [IBD/TIPP has too many undecideds], McCain in the 40-45 range. There has been little movement in fav/unfav.
Speaking of the debate, Gallup agrees that Obama 'won', although minds are usually not changed much by debates no matter who wins.
Americans who watched Wednesday’s third and final presidential debate say Barack Obama did a better job than John McCain by 56% to 30%. The public viewed Obama as the winner of all three debates.
Despite doing well with the public in every poll, Obama's lead shrunk from +11 to +7 over two days (now stable) in the R2K poll. We've been speculating about the 'why' for a few days, though the tightening isn't seen in all the trackers, so the 'what' isn't clearly established. When we zoom in to Sep-Oct (the graph is the trackers only as of last night), what we get with pollster.com is this:
Gallup notes:
Obama's eight-point lead among registered voters is similar to his margin among this group over the last several days.
Rasmussen notes:
These figures reflect a remarkably stable race in which Obama has enjoyed a four-to-eight point advantage for twenty-three straight days. McCain has not been up by even a single point in over a month (see trends).
Diageo/Hotline notes:
Obama now leads LVs by 7%; one week ago, in the survey completed 10/10, his lead was 10%. While Obama's margins among Indies and Dems are nearly identical to last week, McCain's advantage among GOPers has jumped 10%.
Of interest is this graph of R2K internals, looking at how each candidate does with his own party, and showing data similar to Hotline.
McCain's improvement appears to be driven by base voters coming home to the GOP. Obama's 87-88 with Democrats has been steady. For comparison purposes (scroll down), Bush got 93% of Republicans and Kerry got 89% of Democrats while splitting independents in 2004, an era where the party ID was equivalent.
In looking at independents over the last week, we see a couple of points of movement.
In 2004, Kerry and Bush split independents 49-48 according to exit polls. Given the larger size of the D base this year, if the candidates do equally well with partisans, splitting the independents should lead to an Obama win. Winning them means a bigger win.
Added: emptywheel asked about Latinos. Obama's numbers have not changed. However, the 10% undecideds are now down to 2, mostly going to McCain. these may be conservative votes coming home.
Since we have a high Latino weighting, this may have played a factor. H/t emptywheel for asking the question.