Two averages of polls released on Wednesday show a substantial drop in Barack Obama’s lead over John McCain for the presidency
LOS ANGELES: Two averages of polls released on Wednesday show a substantial drop in Barack Obama’s lead over John McCain for the presidency, but there appears to be some question over how much stock can be put in the numbers.
Both RealClearPolitics.com and Pollster.com averages show Obama’s lead slipping from more than 7% to right at the 6% mark. On Tuesday, Real Clear had a 7.2% gap while Pollster’s was 7.6%.
Is this sizable shift a one-day anomaly, or an indication of things to come?
While the move is somewhat puzzling to pollsters, it can be easily explained away as the usual tightening that occurs when last-minute undecided voters start to declare their allegiances. Most are expected to go into the McCain camp after giving Obama some serious consideration.
“They’d be with the front-runner by now if they were going to be,” said Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based pollster. “It is right toward the end. A lot of voters are focusing on the election.” Because there are so few undecided voters left, that may not be enough to help McCain’s cause. And capturing those last-minute undecided voters may be giving a misguided gauge of where the election stands, says Ciruli.
Traditional polls that survey mostly voters who have cast ballots in previous elections are tending to show Obama with a narrower lead. But they may not be adequately gauging first-time voters, including youths, African-Americans and others. A handful of other polls that weigh heavily on the side of first-time voters show a much wider margin for Obama.
A key factor in the narrowing of the poll averages in Wednesday’s data was a Rasmussen survey that showed Obama’s lead whittled down to 50% to 47%. A few days ago, Rasmussen showed Obama with an 8-point lead.
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