Last week the same polling showed the race
Obama: 53%
McCain: 43%
Oh well, I guess CNN was just trying to push a Meme... FAIL
Others have weighed in today on the verdict that the race is infact NOT tightening, but rather, stable as can be...
The Fix
While the polling outlook may well have improved marginally for McCain over the past week, the structural problems revealed in the most recent Washington Post/ABC News poll remain.
The election is a referendum on the economy and which candidate is better suited to correct its problems. Due to the strong sense that the country is headed off in the wrong direction AND the huge unpopularity of Bush, Obama is far better positioned to win the economic argument than McCain.
And, never forget the continued financial advantage that Obama enjoys over McCain. It's extremely difficult for a candidate trailing in the polls to overcome being outspent three to one and, in some cases, far worse without some sort of major external event intruding.
In sum, can we buy that "Joe the Plumber" and Obama's pledge to "spread the wealth" has helped bring white men back to McCain's side? Absolutely. Is it enough to change our current analysis that Obama is the clear frontrunner to be the next president of the United States? No.
Nate Silver
Between "Joe the Plumber", "spread the wealth", "I'm not George Bush", etc., however, McCain at least now seems to have a few somewhat more constructive talking points (in that sense, the fact that the Ayers attacks went over like a lead balloon at the debate might have done him a favor). So some of those crestfallen conservatives might have moved back into the likely voter universe.
What I don't know that McCain is doing, on the other hand, is actually persuading very many voters, and particularly not independents or registered Democrats. If that is the case, than McCain is likely to run into something of a wall very soon here, brought about the Republicans' substantial disadvantage in partisan identification. People sometimes misunderstand the nature of "momentum" in presidential campaigns. If McCain was down 8 points yesterday, and is down 6 points today, that does not mean that he is likely to be 4 points down tomorrow. On the contrary, polling in the general election seems essentially to be a random walk, with the minor stipulation that the polling has had some tendency to tighten slightly during the stretch run (as our model accounts for). That is, the polls are essentially as likely to move back toward Obama tomorrow as they are to continue to move toward McCain.
McCain's other problem is that the polls in battleground states have not really tightened at all. Obama gets good numbers today, for instance, in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Florida. Obama presently has something like a 3:1 advantage in advertising, and most of that advertising is concentrated in battleground states. As such, this may serve as a hedge against any improvements that McCain is able to make elsewhere in the country.
Rasmussen is out any minute now... the state results so far today have been positively eye catching... Up big in North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, close in Georgia... Can't wait to see what Scott has for us this evening.
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