Tracking Poll Update: 5 Days To Go

With five days to go until Election Day, it’s official that McCain is surging. Surging to a five or six percentage point deficit that is. The movement appears to have occurred Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. As you see in red below, Obama was up by about eight percentage points in the sample (10/25) that included last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Next, also in red, you see that Obama was up by six percentage points in an independent sample (10/28) from Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Based on my massaging of the data, the worst day of polling for Obama appears to have been Sunday. Over the course of the campaign, there has been some convincing evidence that Obama polls slightly worse over the weekend when many of his younger supporters are not as likely to be home to answer pollster’s calls. However, since today’s results include Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday interviews, they should be a fairly accurate gauge of the current state of the race.

Date	Gallup	Rasmussen	Hotline	Research 2000	Zogby	IBD/TIPP	ABC	7-Poll Adjusted Average
10/20	9	4	5	8	6	6	9	6.7
10/21	10	4	6	8	8	6	9	7.2
10/22	8	6	5	10	10	4	11	7.6
10/23	6	7	5	10	12	1	11	7.3
10/24	7	7	7	12	10	4	9	7.8
10/25	8	8	7	12	9	4	9	8.1
10/26	9	8	8	11	5	4	7	7.6
10/27	10	5	8	8	5	3	7	6.7
10/28	7	5	8	7	4	4	7	6.0
10/29	7	3	7	6	5	3	8	5.5
10/30	7	5	6	5	7	4	8	6.0

What does this mean? Well, Obama was up by about seven or eight percentage points last week. This week he is up by about five or six percentage points. I think it’s likely that McCain will pick up another percentage point or two this coming Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, which will make the difference three or four percentage points in the final tracking poll numbers. If I had to guess the popular vote, based on current trends, I’d have to go with a four-percentage point Obama victory. However, your guess is as good as mine.

The next update will be Saturday.