Posted by
Mike Bates on Friday, October 17, 2008 10:40:20 AM
On Thursday's ABC World News, anchor Charles Gibson's lead-off story was on the presidential campaign:
"Two weeks, five days to go, home stretch. Barack Obama
and John McCain began today laying out their closing strategies. And
while Obama continues to hold a double-digit lead in most national
polls, it is the results in individual states that are all important."
The emphasis on Obama's supposedly huge, possibly insurmountable
lead is used by some in the mainstream media to suggest the
inevitability of a Democratic win. But you have to wonder, at least in
this instance, what polls ABC News is examining. Obama enjoys a lead
in most opinion surveys, but it's not as large as Gibson claimed.
Thursday's Gallup Daily poll showed a 49% to 43% Obama lead over McCain.
Rasmussen had it at 50% to 46%.
At Zogby, it was 49% to 43%.
The IBD /TIPP tracking poll showed the race at 45% to 42%
The RealClearPolitics poll average, which incorporates findings of 13 national polls, showed a 49.5 to 42.7 Obama lead.
Prospects for the McCain-Palin are not quite as bleak as some in the
mainstream media would like. But that doesn't mean they'll stop
trying.