Our July poll results have McCain holding a 3 point lead over Obama 43-40. This is now inside the margin of error of our poll, so basically we have a dead heat.
One thing I will point out, we seemed to have gotten a funky sample from the 828 area code this month. Last month we had McCain leading Obama by 19 points in the west. This month we have Obama leading McCain by 10.
A 29 point swing in one month is pretty much impossible, and knowing what we know about the political bend of western NC, there’s just no way Obama is up 10 points out there.
So our poll should probably go a couple of more points towards McCain, but if we’re getting into that, it should also go a couple of points towards Obama if the percentage of black vote goes up to around 22% as everyone expects (It’s 19% in this month’s poll and historical average is around 18%).
Conclusion: The race is close, but McCain is probably up a small amount.
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