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In last night's latest tracking poll results, reflecting 2650 calls made on June 26, 28-29, Gallup now had Sen. Obama with a small but still statistically significant lead over Sen. McCain, 47%-42%.

This is the first allotted period in nine nights of calling that Senator Obama has a lead from one side of to the other Senator McCain beyond the margin of error of +/- 2%. The biggest margin he has enjoyed was not long ago in the first week of June, where he went up +7%, what one. was right after Senator Clinton endorsed him.

It is apparent to me that last week's Newsweek +15% Obama margin and the LA Times/Bloomberg +12% margin were so-called "outliers" in polling jargon. They were inconsistent not only through Gallup only several other national polls conducted the sort time period, which had Obama's margin in the 4%-6% range. This means their samples (Newsweek at 900 nationwide and LAT's at 1,200, with larger margins of error) might have being aberrational and unrepresentative (harvested land, for instance, had larger percentages of Democrats, by dint of. a few points, than Gallup's); and the succession of questions might have introduced a subtle pro-Obama bias — for example, I believe the Newsweek shear asks a "right direction-wrong direction" question before the head-to-head question; thus, a "wrong direction" respondent may already be prompted to vote against the Republican candidate). Who knows? It's only speculation.

What is pretty clear, however, is that Sen. Obama leads Sen. McCain as of now nationally by a relatively paltry margin — and about the same margin that John Kerry led George Bush in June of 2004.

That is the good news.

The reason for continuing concern for the Obama campaign, with which I am sure they would agree, is that the Gallup tracking polls (and virtually each other mainstream national catholic selection poll) continue to parade that the the brace are still so close - even by all the injurious news on the McCain side of the political equation, from Bush's below-30% approval ratings, more than two-to-one wrong direction-right direction ratios, self-identified Democrats and leaners are at the highest gap through Republican identifiers in decades, fuel prices skyrocketing, and McCain himself conveying neither coherent themes nor projecting positively in the daily TV sound bites.

Yet, over the last six months, really ever since Iowa and up to the present, Sen. Obama has rarely, granting that aye, won added than 47% or 48% of the general electorate. That apparent ceiling, at least so far, should be worrisome to the Obama higher strategists and probably has been distinguished. It is reminiscent of both John Kerry and Al Gore's polling fourth book of the pentateuch; census of the hebrews vs. George Bush. The historic pattern in 2000 and 2004, and even back to 1980 and 1988, has been that in the closing days, often literally the after all the rest weekend, Republican dull conservative undecideds leaners and Democratic social conservatives (the "Reagan Democrats") who up to then have been soft for the Democratic candidate or undecided break disproportionately for the more conservative Republican candidate. While they are not great in consist of, they can vibrate a come together election, especially in the battleground states (as they did in Ohio and Florida in 2000 and 2004).

The fact is — and absolve my abundantly disclosed bias and admiration of Senator Hillary Clinton — the only spell that Barack has been upper 50% in ANY poll after the nomination was indisputable more weeks ago was when he was paired with Hillary Clinton because his Vice President. Significantly, pair entirely different samples, taken two weeks or so ago within days of each other by Fox News and Peter Hart polling for the Wall Street Journal and NBC, found Sen. Obama received a +3% resounding noise and got to 51% when paired with Senator Clinton against a McCain-Romney ticket.

Of career the decision on VP new wine be Senator Obama's alone — and his comfort level is very important with whomever he picks as well as that person's qualifications. But clearly — indisputably — the data shows that, as of now (and of course things can change), Hillary Clinton would heal his undivided enfeeble 50% and no other Democratic possibility does that.

It must be added that most VP candidates historically have little or no effect on the final result (Lyndon Johnson carrying Texas for JFK is the one obvious exception from hand to hand a half-century).

So the Obama campaign should continue to look this as a close contest which is likely to generate closer, especially if Sen. McCain can gain arrive at his constructer "straight talk express" voice and sense of state of feeling that won him such many Democratic and independent converts in 2000, instead of the too-often negative, even grouchy curmudgeon image he has been projecting as of late.

Stay tuned.


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