Once again, the tracking polls are showing Barack Obama pulling ahead of John McCain, but it’s still unclear if this is the start of a new trend or merely a repeat of the advance-and-retreat that we’ve seen since June.
In the Rasmussen poll, Obama has a six point lead over McCain, his biggest lead yet:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Barack Obama attracting 50% of the vote while John McCain earns 44%. This six-point advantage matches Obama’s biggest lead yet. Obama is now viewed favorably by 56% of voters, McCain by 54%.
Tracking poll results are based upon nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The overwhelming majority of interviews for today’s report were completed before last night’s Presidential debate. Tomorrow morning’s update may give a hint of the debate reaction but the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted after the debate will come on Tuesday.
Similarly, the Gallup tracking poll has Obama ahead by five points, continuing a trend that is more than a week old now:
PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama leads John McCain, 49% to 44%, when registered voters are asked who they would vote for if the election were held today, according to the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update.
These results, from Sept. 24-26, are almost entirely based on interviewing conducted before Friday night’s first presidential debate. This suggests Obama was moving into a slightly better positioning as the two met in Mississippi to debate foreign policy matters and the economic crisis. The five percentage point lead for Obama in today’s update is one of his best in recent weeks, just short of the six-point advantage he had in Sept. 17-19 polling. McCain had been running ahead of Obama since the Republican National Convention earlier this month, but as the financial crisis deepened Obama regained the lead positioning he had enjoyed through much of the summer. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)
The initial impact of the debate — and perhaps more importantly, the political spin in the days after — on voter preferences will be apparent in the next few days of Gallup Poll Daily tracking, with Tuesday’s report the first for which all interviews will be conducted after the debate.
What we’re seeing in these tracking polls, then, is simply a continuation of the trend toward Obama that developed when the current financial crisis took center stage about a week ago. With that crisis unresolved, and Obama putting in what seemed to be a fairly decent performance last night, it will be interesting to see where we go from here.
