PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup Poll Daily tracking for Aug. 14-16 finds John McCain and Barack Obama tied at 45% in the latest presidential election trial heat.
The race has tightened over the past several days with Obama's modest advantage over McCain disappearing. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.) Registered voters' preferences appear quite stable at the moment -- in the last five individual days of Gallup tracking polling, the candidates have been closely matched with neither candidate holding more than a two percentage point advantage on any day.
Obama has returned from his Hawaiian vacation and will have one more week of campaigning before the Democratic national convention takes place in Denver starting Aug. 25. The Republican convention will take place the following week. -- Jeff Jones
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 Aug. 14-16, 2008. For results based on this sample of 2,671 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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