CMKX - Some Polls Show Presidential Race Tightening...

Obama Holds National Lead as Some Polls Show Presidential Race Tightening

Bloomberg.com

By Catherine Dodge and Christopher Stern

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama is holding an average lead of 7 percentage points over John McCain nationally even as some polls show the race tightening 12 days before the election.

More than a dozen national polls have been released this week showing the margin in the presidential race ranging from 1 percentage point to 14 points.

Three surveys -- from the Associated Press-GfK, George Washington University and an Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll - - show McCain closing the gap with Obama.

The AP poll puts Obama at 44 percent to McCain's 43 percent, compared with a 7 percentage point advantage for Obama in their September survey. The GW Battleground poll showed Obama's edge at 2 points, down from 7 points in the middle of October, while the IDB/TIPP tracking survey has the margin for the Democrat narrowing to 1 point from 5 points at the start of the week.

Other polls, including those by Fox News, the Wall Street Journal/NBC, and Gallup show Obama either holding or expanding his lead over McCain. The average of 14 national polls taken between Oct. 16 and Oct. 22 is just over 7 percentage points, according to data compiled by Realclearpolitics.com. The gap has increased steadily since mid-September.

Poll results can vary because researchers use different methods and assumptions for defining likely voters, said Karlyn Bowman, who tracks polling at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Differences in how questions are asked and how much respondents are pushed in one direction or another can also cause discrepancies, she said.

Timing

Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster who supervised the GW poll with Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, said the timing of the poll also can affect results. The GW poll didn't survey people on Friday and Saturday nights.

``I think there are a lot of the harder core Republicans that are family adults that just will not engage in polling over the weekend,'' Goeas said.

In addition, some pollsters have an ``unrealistic'' expectation that the youth vote will dramatically increase this year, he said. Younger voters tend to be Obama voters by large margins.

Because the presidency isn't won directly by popular vote, Obama and McCain are waging a state-by-state battle to get the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim the White House. The states have electoral votes equal to their representation in Congress. Washington D.C. gets three electoral votes.

Battlegrounds

Obama leads McCain, an Arizona Republican, in the key battleground states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. The three states combined have 68 electoral votes and have played a central role in recent elections.

Obama is ahead by 5 percentage points in Florida, 14 in Ohio and 13 in Pennsylvania, the surveys, conducted Oct. 16-21 found.

McCain has narrowed Obama's lead in Florida from three weeks ago, but fell further behind in Ohio as concerns about the economy continue to shape voters' views, the polls found. Ohio and Florida both went to Republican President George W. Bush in the last two elections, while Pennsylvania gave its 21 electoral votes to the Democratic candidate both times.

If the numbers hold up, Obama ``could win the biggest Democratic landslide since Lyndon Johnson in 1964,'' Peter Brown, assistant director of Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

The Florida and Pennsylvania polls have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points, while the Ohio poll has an error margin of plus or minus 2.7 points.

Nevada, North Carolina

Polls by CNN and Opinion Research also showed the Democrat ahead in Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia, while McCain holds a lead in West Virginia. Obama also led in Ohio in the CNN survey.

Virginia hasn't gone for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 and North Carolina last gave its electoral votes to a Democrat in 1976. Nevada has voted for the Republican in eight of the last 10 elections.

The CNN polls found Obama ahead by 5 percentage points among likely voters in Nevada, 4 points in North Carolina and Ohio, and 10 points in Virginia. McCain leads in West Virginia, which was won by Bush in 2000 and 2004, by 9 percentage points.

The CNN state polls have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for surveys in Nevada and Ohio and 4 percentage points in the other three states.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington at cdodge1@bloomberg.net; Christopher Stern in Washington at cstern3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 23, 2008 16:15 EDT