In a weekend of largely bad polling news, Republican Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has now gotten some good news from Gallup: there are signs now that the race may be tightening as Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s lead over McCain is down three points, to 7 percent:
The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking report finds registered voters preferring Barack Obama (50%) to John McCain (43%) when asked who they would vote for if the presidential election were held today.
These results, based on Oct. 9-11 polling, represent a narrowing of Obama’s lead over McCain. Obama led by double-digits for three consecutive days last week, but now his advantage is down to seven percentage points. Obama has led in each of the last three individual days’ polling, but by less than double-digits each day, suggesting that the race is, in fact, tightening.
Obama has generally held an advantage over McCain since mid-September, when the imminent failure of several large financial institutions made the economy an even bigger concern than it had previously been.
Note the volatility of these polls. As noted in our earlier polls, the trending is now heavily against McCain. But that could change: three weeks is a lifetime in politics. Two factors that suggest it might not change unless there is some big political gaffe or unforeseen event: most polls suggest moderate and independent voters are now breaking towards Obama. And then there is the financial news which continues to hurt McCain.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.