Below The Beltway

We’re three days out from the Vice-Presidential debate and it’s fairly clear that it has not had a significant impact on the Presidential race.  On Thursday, he was ahead by seven in the Rasmussen poll and five in the Gallup poll. On the morning after the debate, Rasmussen and Gallup both had him ahead by seven points. If the McCain campaign was hoping that Sarah Palin would chip away at that lead, it must be sadly disappointed today.

First, the Rasmussen poll has Obama ahead by eight with the highest rankings he’s received during the campaign:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Barack Obama attracting 52% of the vote while John McCain earns 44%. This is the highest level of support ever recorded for Obama and is his largest lead of the year. It also continues a remarkable twenty-five days in a row where the Democrat’s support has never declined by even a single point. The Democratic candidate has gained six full percentage points of support since Lehman Brothers collapsed to start the Wall Street mess

(…)

Obama now leads by two points among men. That’s the first time he has led among men all year and he also enjoys a fourteen point advantage among women. Obama attracts 12% of Republican voters and leads by eleven among those not affiliated with either major political party. McCain gets the vote from 11% of Democrats

It is worth noting that Obama’s lead is now bigger than any lead enjoyed at any point by either candidate in Election 2004.

The Gallup poll, meanwhile, also shows Obama with an eight-point lead as his lead streak extends to the tenth day:

PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama leads John McCain among registered voters across the country by a 50% to 42% margin in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Oct. 3-5, the tenth straight day in which Obama has held a statistically significant lead.

This ten-day stretch of a significant Obama lead is the longest since he became the presumptive nominee back in early June, and the longest for either candidate at any point in the campaign.

(…)

Today’s result includes interviewing conducted Friday through Sunday, after the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate between Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden, and after Friday’s passage of a revised economic rescue plan to help alleviate the Wall Street financial crisis.

The results suggest that neither of these events had a significant impact on voter preferences.

Looked at broadly, Obama’s percent of the vote has been within a very narrow range of 48% to 50% over the last ten days, and McCain’s has been within an equally narrow range of 42% of 44% over the same time period. These results suggest that aside from normal sampling error, the underlying dynamics of the race have become quite stable, and underscore the degree to which there has been little meaningful change in the race in well over a week.

Which makes tomorrow’s debate, and the one on October 15th, all the more important for McCain. Unless he can do something that really changes the subject, his chances of winning become even slimmer.