Poll Watch: 8/5

Brace yourself...of the 3 big national polls out today, 2 our of 3 actually have John McCain with a lead. Zogby and Rasmussen give McCain a 1 point edge, while Gallup puts Barry up by 3. All are in the margin of error of course.

From Zogby:

A national Associated TV/Zogby International telephone poll of 1,011 likely voters conducted July 31-Aug. 1 finds Republican Sen. John McCain taking a razor-thin 42%-41% lead over Democrat Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the U.S. presidency.

The margin between the candidates is statistically insignificant, but demonstrates a notable turn-around from the Reuters/Zogby poll of July 7-9 that showed Obama ahead, 46%-36% in a four-way match-up that included Libertarian candidate Bob Barr of Georgia and liberal independent candidate Ralph Nader. McCain made significant gains at Obama's expense among some of what had been Obama's strongest demographic groups.

From Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows the race for the White House is tied once again-- Barack Obama and John McCain each attract 44% of the vote. However, when "leaners" are included, it's McCain 47% and Obama 46%. ...

This is the second straight day showing McCain with a statistically insignificant advantage nationally over Obama. These two days are the first time that the GOP hopeful has enjoyed a lead of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. Overall, however, these results are consistent with results from the past couple of weeks showing a race that is essentially even as the convention season approaches.

And from Gallup:

Registered voters show a slight preference for Barack Obama (46%) over John McCain (43%) if the presidential election were held today, according to the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking results.

The three percentage point advantage for Obama matches the average since early June, when Obama clinched the number of delegates needed to head to the Democratic convention as the presumptive presidential nominee. Since then, Obama has never trailed McCain among registered voters, though McCain has tied Obama five times during this span, including Gallup Poll Daily tracking reports for last Friday and Saturday.

Big issue to point out with Gallup - it's "registered" voters...not "likely" voters, as with Rasmussen and Zogby. Which means that, if they had a likely voters subset, it probably showed McCain ahead...so they didn't publish it. Apparently wanting to avoid what happened the last time they did so, (showing McCain up by 3), and their being forced to write an op-ed as to whether or not "likely" voters matter.

The big takeaway here is the fact that the race is essentially dead even. Dead even, after all the money Obama's spent...after all the extra free press due to the longer Democrat primary contest...dead even after the World Tour with sycophant media accompanyment...dead even, despite the fact that the Dems outpoll the Republicans by double digits on the generic ballot. Not to mention that, at this point in the race, Dukakis had a double digit lead over Bush 41 in '88, Gore had a double digit lead over Bush 43 2000...as did John Kerry in 2004.

So what's up? As I've said before, I'ts all about the O. All about the fact that he's not closing the sale. His celebrity status is starting to backfire...people are getting tired of the relentless coverage...people are actually starting to focus on the race and, bad news for Barry, learning more about him.

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• Related:
• Obama lead plunges in Massachusetts
• McCain moving up in polls
• John McCain catching up with Obama
• New poll shows Obama losing support among young and women

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