We’re getting to the point in the Presidential race where significant movement in the polls in either direction is going to become less and less likely. The closer we get to the election, the more people will be making up their minds and, absent a major game-changing story (and we’ve already had two of those since the conventions ended), the odds that a trailing candidate will pull ahead become slimmer and slimmer by the day.
Today’s tracking polls show this clearly than ever.
First, the Rasmussen polls shows Obama with a seven point lead over McCain:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Barack Obama attracting 51% of the vote while John McCain earns 44%. For each of the past ten days, Obama has been at 50% or 51% and McCain has been at 44% or 45%.
And, as I said, people are starting to make up their minds for good:
Forty-five percent (45%) of voters say they are certain they will vote for Obama and will not change their mind. Thirty-eight percent (38%) say the same about McCain. Thirteen percent (13%) currently have a preference for one of the candidates but might change their mind. Four percent (4%) are either undecided or plan to vote for a third-party candidate.
Which makes McCain’s job all the more difficult:
One way of understanding the difficult challenge now facing McCain is to consider the relatively small group of persuadable voters who could still change their mind. The Republican hopeful would have to win nearly 80% of those votes to pull ahead in the race. That’s especially challenging because most of those voters are currently leaning towards Obama. In other words, while the race is not over, McCain needs a significant–game-changing—event to win the White House. Simply doing what he’s been doing a little better will not be enough.
More importantly, McCain faces this challenge while simultaneously facing an electorate that is very receptive to Obama’s message of change from the status quote:
Today, just 9% of voters now say that the United States is heading in the right direction. Eighty-eight percent (88%) disagree and say the nation has gotten off on the wrong track.
At the same time that the number who say the nation is heading in the right direction has fallen, Obama’s support has steadily increased. In fact, his level of support has not fallen by even a single point on a single day for any of the twenty-four days dating back to September 12. He was supported by 46% of voters on September 12 and 13 before inching up to 47% for four days. Then, he was at 48% for six days and 49% for two days. Obama hit the 50% mark on September 26 and stayed there for four days before earning 51% support for each of the past six days.
Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters now trust Obama more than McCain on the economy while 42% hold the opposite view. Given the importance of the economic issues in Election 2008, it’s not a coincidence that these numbers so closely mirror the overall voter preferences in the tracking poll.
With numbers lack that, McCain’s task not only seems difficult, it seems impossible.
The Gallup Daily poll is pretty much in the same spot it was yesterday:
PRINCETON, NJ — Registered voters across the country continue to favor Barack Obama over John McCain for president, now by 50% to 43% in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Oct. 2-4.
This is the ninth consecutive Gallup Poll Daily report showing Obama leading by a significant margin, tying Obama’s record frontrunner streak of nine days around the time of the Democratic National Convention in late August and early September.
Today’s result includes two full days of interviewing after the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate between Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden, as well as after the news on Friday, Oct. 3, that Congress had passed a revised economic rescue plan to help alleviate the Wall Street financial crisis.
The race has been slightly closer on both of these two individual days (Oct. 3-4) than the previous two days. Obama held particularly large leads over McCain from Oct. 1-2, possibly resulting from Americans’ focus on the Wall Street financial crisis and congressional rescue plan dominating the news at that time. Since then, support for Obama has remained about the same, at the 49% to 50% level, while support for McCain has increased slightly, with an associated decline in the percentage of undecided voters.
With no signs, though, that McCain is chipping in to Obama’s lead.
