Democrat Barack Obama's lead over Republican rival John McCain firmed marginally to 6 points with support for both candidates steady before Tuesday's U.S. presidential election, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Sunday.
Obama leads McCain by 50 percent to 44 percent among likely voters in the three-day national tracking poll, up from a 5-point advantage on Saturday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
'There are two full days to go before Election Day and obviously anything can happen, but it is hard to see where McCain goes from here,' pollster John Zogby said.
The Zogby polls have been pretty consistently providing the most optimistic view of McCain's chances, if one rules out some of the partisan-funded polls, regularly showing smaller margins than many of the others. This has led many McCain-friendly bloggers (like Matt Drudge) to promote Zogby results over those from Gallup and other polling outfits. But six points nationally with two days to go is a pretty big margin, and the state-level polls don't offer a lot of hope either. One measure of the daunting landscape is that it is relatively easy to find ways that Obama could get to 270 even if he were to lose Pennsylvania; it's almost impossible to find paths to 270 for McCain should he lose there. If Obama wins in three western states where he has been leading consistently -- Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico -- he can lose Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and still get 270 by winning Virginia. While I suspect Florida may still go to McCain, Ohio has been polling for Obama for weeks now, and the final Columbus Dispatch poll shows Obama up by 6 with a 2.0 margin of error. Could PA, OH, and FL swing back to McCain? Sure, but it seems less likely when the national polling is showing a slight widening of Obama's lead.
But in a little more than 48 hours, we can stop speculating and start watching actual returns. What a relief.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment