Gallup's done a Zogby and included today's interviews in their final numbers.  53-42 LV1 and LV2 (+3 from yesterday LV1, +2 LV2), 53-40 RV (+2).

The final Gallup 2008 pre-election poll -- based on Oct. 31-Nov. 2 Gallup Poll Daily tracking -- shows Barack Obama with a 53% to 42% advantage over John McCain among likely voters. When undecided voters are allocated proportionately to the two candidates to better approximate the actual vote, the estimate becomes 55% for Obama to 44% for McCain.

The trend data clearly show Obama ending the campaign with an upward movement in support, with eight to 11 percentage point leads among likely voters in Gallup's last four reports of data extending back to Oct. 28. Obama's final leads among both registered voters and likely voters are the largest of the campaign.

I'm skeptical that their final LV numbers just happened to merge in the last poll - very odd, that - but on the whole we could hardly ask for a better bit of poll porn 48 hours out.  Safe to say - not that it can't happen - that for the entire industry this would be the biggest embarrassment in the history of polling, by far, if McCain won.

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I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that Zogby has concluded their one-day poll for McCain didn't really affect the overall results of their poll:

Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby Poll: One Day Is Not A Trend: Obama Holds His Lead

So even with one good day of polling for McCain, Obama remains in the lead by 6.7% in the Zogby poll.

But what really got me is this:

Remember, as I said yesterday, one day does not make a trend. This is a three-day rolling average and no changes have been tectonic. A special note to blogger friends: calm it down. Lay off the cable television noise and look at your baseball cards in your spare time. It is better for your (and everyone else's) health.

Let's review: Zogby trumpets a one-point lead for McCain, and right-wing sites go nuts for that, even as Zogby cautions that a one-day reading might not be conclusive. Meanwhile, Nate correctly shows that the one-day result is likely an outlier -- basically echoing Zogby's caution.

Yet when Nate proves to have been correct and Drudge at all prove to have been mistaken, who does Zogby criticize: baseball statistician Nate.

I guess the real story is that Zogby is feeling the pressure of the success of fivethirtyeight.com. Perhaps if Zogby attempted to be an actually neutral polling outfit as they claim, they wouldn't have anything to worry about.

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Hotline has the national race suddenly narrowing to two points with the following analysis.

-- The race has tightened in the last day. After trailing by 5-7 pts. for the last 10 days, McCain is now just 2 pts. behind Obama.

--One potential reason: Obama's one-time lead on the question of who'd best handle the economy has evaporated. Today, Obama and McCain are tied at 42%. Independent voters favor McCain on the economy by an 8 pt. margin (42-34%).

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Here are the trackers with their 3-day rolling averages and the trends from the prior 3 days:

Rasmussen Reports (w/leaners) 9/12-14

McCain/Palin 49 (50, 49, 49...)
Obama/Biden 47 (47, 46, 46...)

Gallup 9/12-14

McCain/Palin 47 (47, 47, 48...)
Obama/Biden 45 (45, 45, 45...)

DailyKos/R2000 9/12-14

McCain/Palin 45 (45, 47, 46...)
Obama/Biden 48 (47, 47, 47...)

Hotline/Diageo 9/12-14

McCain/Palin 43 (44, 45, 44...)
Obama/Biden 44 (45, 44, 45...)

Average them out and you get 46% to 46%, a 1 point net improvement for Obama since Friday. Tremayne at Open Left breaks it down.

This is the first time in the history of the tracking poll average that we've had an exact tie, except when there were just two tracking polls when it happened all the time.

The trend is clear, McCain's lead has been slowly fading from it's peak of exactly 2.0 points on Sept. 8 and 9. What is not clear is whether this fade is just the typical end of a bounce or if it is due, in part, to the recent negative press (well deserved) experienced by the McCain-Palin campaign.

One item inside the Hotline/Diageo numbers would appear to explain the apparent steady drop in support for McCain/Palin that we're seeing (although it doesn't answer Tremayne's central question): Obama is regaining his enthusiasm edge.

In terms of reported enthusiasm over their candidates...today's Diageo/Hotline Tracker Poll shows a gradual downturn in GOP enthusiasm for their candidates.

An 11 point swing in 3 days doesn't strike me as terribly gradual, but however you slice it, the trend is clear, on enthusiasm for their candidate, the Democratic ticket is rising and the GOP is falling:

Obama/Biden 67 (66, 66, 65...)
McCain/Palin 59 (62, 67, 68...)

Assuming this trend continues, we should see this reflect in state polls in the days ahead.

Update [2008-9-15 17:42:21 by Todd Beeton]:R2000/dkos poll link fixed.

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First it was Obama's time and now it's Clinton's.  It does look like the death spiral scenario might not be happening.  She pulled back to within 4, 49-45.

It'll take a few days to see if this is a full blown recovery or just a tracking poll blip, but that's definitely good news for the Clinton camp.

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