Fox News Poll: Obama Leads McCain 45 To 39 Percent

A new Fox News poll has Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama leading rival Republican Sen. John McCain 45 to 39 percent — with McCain losing some of the independent voter support he had gained immediately following the Republican convention in a political climate where the economy dominates political discussion:

As majorities of each party’s faithful back their party nominee, the battle stays focused on that most sought-after group of voters: independents.

These voters, evenly divided between the candidates in August, swung to McCain earlier this month, which gave him his first lead over Obama since April. In this latest poll independents give a slight edge to Obama, though many have moved back into the undecided column.

In addition, the poll shows Obama has improved his position on the most important issue to voters this year — the economy. He is seen as the best candidate to handle the nation’s economy, and more voters also say he would be better at handling the current financial crisis facing the country.

The poll finds that Obama is more trusted to handle the economy, the number-one issue on the minds of voters, by a margin of 10 percent.

McCain held a 3-point advantage earlier this month immediately after the Republican convention (September 8-9). Before that Obama had a 3-point lead going into the Democratic convention (August 19-20). Looking back as far as a year ago, in head-to-head polling neither candidate has had a lead outside the poll’s margin of sampling error. Obama’s lead today is just at the outside edge of the margin of error.

The new poll finds Obama now has the edge among men (+5 percentage points) — a group that had previously either been evenly divided or slightly in McCain’s column. Obama maintains his advantage among women voters (+8), while white women are a bit more likely to support McCain (+2).

This is one of a recent batch of polls showing Obama taking the lead in light of the Wall Street financial melt down. The McCain camp has charged that one of these polls has flawed methodology and that their internal polls show a much closer race than published polls.