Closer than it Seemed?

The Gallup likely voter poll for today shows that likely voters are breaking toward McCain as the election nears. Today's poll of likely voters shows Obama leading McCain 49 to 47 - a four point improvement for McCain since Tuesday and within the margin of error for the poll.

Readers of this blog will recall that I have been wondering if this race would close up as the election neared and if undecided voters would ultimately decide they feel comfortable with Senator Obama. It will be interesting to see if Zogby, Rasmussen end up with a similar McCain bounce this week, and what kind of coverage the poll gets in the media. Obama supporters have only to recall the lost momentum late in the primary campaign as Hillary Clinton came back from the dead and Obama was able to hold the nomination only because he'd built such a margin early on.

As I speculated in an earlier post: is his lead large enough, and are people 'sold' on this candidate? It would give me concern if my candidate had a history of soft-polling to be within four or five points heading into the election weekend. Add to that the other issues that may or may not be real issues in the voting booth, and I would think the Obama campaign must be quietly nervous behind closed doors.

Still, it is just one poll right now, so we'll have to keep a weather eye for Zogby and Rassmussen, et al, over the next few days.