Obama's lead in the national polls is narrowing. Last week as the stock market sunk lower and lower Obama's lead in the polls expanded to about 8 to 9 points according to the Real Clear Politics average.(Click on title for a link) The individual state polls soon followed the national averages and the political pundits started to count John McCain out. In the last few days that surge for Obama has stopped and the gap has narrowed to about a 4 point lead for Obama. I believe that the narrowing of the Obama lead is the result of the shock of the stock market drop beginning to level off in peoples minds. I believe last week there was a panic in the stock market AND in the minds of the voters. In looking at the polls I only count the polls that run through yesterday (Wednesday October 16) and have a sample of at least 1000 leaning voters. Be careful when looking at the Real Clear Politics average as there are a lot of old polls and what I call "crap" polls listed. (ie polls with small samples with strange weightings of Republicans and Democrats... CBS,New York Times, Newsweek and LA Times come to mind.... do you see a pattern?) The polls as of today look as follows:
Rasmussen Tracking Obama +4
Reuters/Zogby Tracking Obama +5
Gallup Tracking Traditional Obama +2
Gallup Tracking Expanded Obama +6
The average of these 4 polls through yesterday gives Obama a 4.25% lead. This gives John McCain a fighting chance of overcoming it as it sinks in that Barak Obama could actually end up as President. It's one thing to say you want Obama as a protest to what is happened in America and it's something else when he actually may be President for 4 years with a Democrat Congress! If this narrowing of national polls holds up I expect the state polls to also start narrowing in the next few day. It's not over till it's over. Ask Presidents Gore, Kerry and Dewey!
