Rasmussen and Gallup: Race within margin of error
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Barack Obama attracting 50% of the vote nationwide while John McCain earns 47%. This is the first time McCain has been within three points of Obama in more than a month and the first time his support has topped 46% since September 24:.
Prior to today’s update, Obama had been ahead by four-to-eight points every single day for 33 straight days. During that 33-day stretch, Obama’s voter support had stayed between 50% and 52% every day while McCain was in the 44% to 46% range. It will take another day or so to determine whether today’s numbers reflect a lasting change or statistical noise. Two of the last three nights of polling show a closer race than was found in the previous month.
Ed:
We talked quite a bit about polling at last night’s Talk the Vote event. All three hosts reminded people that Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan with eight days left in the race in 1980 outside the margin of error. Furthermore, the rising number of refusals ” those who refuse to participate in telephone polling ” make the predictive value of electoral polling more questionable than ever before. Michael Medved said that some pollsters report refusal levels as high as 80%.
Did you catch that AKD?
TIPP daily tracking poll, also shows a margin-of-error race.
