Gallup Daily: Race Tied at 44%

Click here for Gallup's special roundup of July's important election polls.

PRINCETON, NJ -- According to Gallup Poll Daily tracking from July 29-31, John McCain and Barack Obama are now tied at 44% in the preferences of national registered voters.

This is not much different from the results reported in Gallup Poll Daily tracking on Thursday, when the two were nearly tied with 45% for Obama and 44% for McCain. However, it is a substantial turnaround from earlier this week when Obama held a statistically significant lead coming off his high-profile trip to Europe, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.

Obama and McCain were closely matched in each of the three nights of interviewing included in today's result, with neither candidate ahead by more than three percentage points. This suggests that the recent surge in voter support for Obama has truly subsided.

The contrast between Obama's recent advantage over McCain (ranging from six to nine points) and today's result is particularly notable because this is McCain's strongest showing in over a month. The last time Gallup found the race exactly tied was in late June. By contrast, in the weeks just prior to Obama's overseas trip, he had led the race by an average of four points. (To view the complete trend since March 7, click here.) -- Lydia Saad

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 29-31, 2008. For results based on this sample of 2,680 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.