McCain gains on Obama in Poll

One poll moves (a lot); the rest stay mostly flat

Over the weekend, there wasn’t much change in the poll numbers in the presidential race between John McCain and Barack Obama.

Obama still enjoys more than a 7-point lead in the Real Clear Politics national poll average, with McCain’s standing up just a touch from 42.5 percent to 43.1 percent.

There are more than five daily national tracking polls, and only one — the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll — had significant movement over the weekend. You probably saw the headline on Sunday: Obama lead drops to 5 points. As recently as Thursday, Obama held a 12-point lead in the Zogby poll, but McCain gained 5 points since then, while Obama dropped 2.

There was one other poll that showed a smaller noteworthy move this morning. Rasmussen Reports released a poll this morning that has McCain gaining two points to put Obama's lead down to 5 from a high of 8-points on Sunday.

For the record, Gallup's tracking polls held steady overnight with only a point fluctuation depending on the voting model used. The Diageo/Hotline poll has Obama holding at 50 percent to McCain's 42 percent. The Washington Post/ABC News poll has Obama up by 7, although it's worth noting that is the closest margin for that poll since it began a week ago.

Remember: Day-to-day activity isn’t as important as what the polls do over time. Losing or gaining single points here and there can be a function of statistical “noise.” To really tell whether or not the state of the race is changing, we need to look at the trend.

Right now, the aggregated movement still looks to be in Obama’s favor —– even with the Zogby poll included.

The graph below shows the Real Clear Politics poll average plotted over time, demonstrating each candidate's polling trend in relation to the other. The current course (Obama holding between 5 and 8 points ahead of McCain) started in late September.

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Real Clear Politics Poll Averages

Of course, the national polls don't break out specifics on what might happen in the electoral college. So, the Yahoo! News Political Dashboard uses state poll averages, where Obama currently holds leads in many swing states, to project the electoral college winner on the map below.