First the AP, then Rasmussen, now Fox…. Obama 47, McCain 44.
That’s down from 9 pts 1 week ago.
Now I’ve always been of the persuasion that the casual political observer should only bother looking at state polls. However, these polls must be considered newsworthy for a couple reasons:
1) As Rove stated in his article in the WSJ today:
“Through yesterday, there have been 728 national polls with head-to-head matchups of the candidates, 215 in October alone. In 2004, there were just 239 matchup polls, with 67 of those in October. At this rate, there may be almost as many national polls in October of 2008 as there were during the entire year in 2004.”
National polls have alone become a story in this election cycle. Not necessarily as a tool for determining a true leader, but in making actual news stories about individual candidates. As in, with this trend of polls the story becomes “McCain is making another of his trademark comebacks” and that is a big positive going into the final weekend.
2) We won’t really have anymore reliable state polling data as we head into the weekend. Since state polls tend to lag a day or two afterwards, this is all we pretty much have to go on. Once again, the trend shows continued tightening and that’s good going into the weekend.