PRINCETON, NJ -- The race for the presidency has moved back into a statistical tie in the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update of national registered voters, with Barack Obama now ahead of John McCain by just one percentage point, 45% to 44%.
Today's results are based on Gallup Poll Daily tracking from July 28-30.
The latest three-day average confirms that Obama was unable to solidify the significant lead he briefly enjoyed among registered voters at the height of publicity surrounding his weeklong visit to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, and Europe. Gallup tracking showed Obama's lead rising at one point as high as nine percentage points (for the average from last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday), but the presumptive Democratic nominee has been losing ground since that point.
The race has been very close before, with Obama holding a 1-point lead as recently as July 15-17, and the race tied for several days in late June. The story of the election through the summer months has been a close race that simply does not seem to want to change. Obama has generally been in the lead, and it is significant that McCain has never held even a 1-point lead among registered voters in Gallup Poll Daily tracking since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination in early June. Still, the relative stability of the race, even in the aftermath of such a high-visibility event as Obama's foreign trip (coupled, of course, with the McCain campaign's vigorous efforts to defuse its impact) continues to suggest that it may be the conventions in late August and early September that will offer the next potential timeframe for significant and/or sustained change. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.) -- Frank Newport
Survey Methods
For the Gallup Poll Daily tracking survey, Gallup is interviewing no fewer than 1,000 U.S. adults nationwide each day during 2008.
The general-election results are based on combined data from July 28-30, 2008. For results based on this sample of 2,679 registered voters, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
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