CBS/NYT poll has a mixed bag of results.
In the three-way race, Bush wins a point and Kerry loses two, carving out a three-point lead margin for Bush, 48% to 45% with 2% going to Nader.
But the very same poll shows a two-way race where both Bush and Kerry lose a point, and Bush thus leads still by only 1%, 47% to 46%.
Will have to wait till the next poll from them to see what's up.
New
ICR poll has mixed news too. Compared to last week, Bush drops three points in the three-way race, while Kerry loses one point. The Bush lead, however, even if now narrowed by 2%, still is commanding: 48% to 43% with 2% to Nader. In the two-way race, Bush loses 2% while Kerry holds steady, but that too still means a remaining Bush lead of 3 points: 49% to 46%.
Thread I see running through the last day or two (or three) of polls - not doublechecking it, just how I remember it - is the number of undecideds going up again after the last debate. See if the next one will bring it down again.
(May I just ask why these four debates are crammed into a relatively short timespan, with then again a few weeks of none following it still? Wouldn't it make more sense to evenly space these debates throughout the last six weeks or so of the campaign?)
For Dems who might be getting overoptimistic, this graph here put my feet back onto the ground again:
Kerry might have been doing better than before in the polls recently, but look at the overview above and you'll still see that in 11 out of 14 polls, Kerry was stuck in the 44-46% zone - that won't be enough. Whereas in 9 out of those 14 polls, Bush still polled 48% or more. Still someways to go.
