Not Too Late

Polls indicate that the McCain campaign's attacks on Barack's character - mostly accurate and justified explorations of his shady, and radical, past - may be starting to have some effect. If McCain can find a way to seize the energy of the bad economy, I think he's still got a good chance to pull this out.

Yesterday, Rasmussen continued an incremental daily move toward McCain, now showing Obama's lead at 6%.

Obama leads by fourteen percentage points among women while McCain leads by two among men. Both men lead by an 86% to 12% margin among members of their own party while Obama holds an eight point advantage among unaffiliated voters.

Zogby has the race at 4%, and the new Gallup poll shows the Obama lead at 5% (it ran 11% on consecutive days last week), with new likely voter numbers pulling it to 4%.

Obama's current advantage is slightly less when estimating the preferences of likely voters, which Gallup will begin reporting on a regular basis between now and the election. Gallup is providing two likely voter estimates to take into account different turnout scenarios.

The first likely voter model is based on Gallup's traditional likely voter assumptions, which determine respondents' likelihood to vote based on how they answer questions about their current voting intention and past voting behavior. According to this model, Obama's advantage over McCain is 50% to 46% in Oct. 9-11 tracking data.

The second likely voter estimate is a variation on the traditional model, but is only based on respondents' current voting intention. This model would take into account increased voter registration this year and possibly higher turnout among groups that are traditionally less likely to vote, such as young adults and racial minorities (Gallup will continue to monitor and report on turnout indicators by subgroup between now and the election). According to this second likely voter model, Obama has a 51% to 45% lead over McCain.