There's not a lot of action in state polling today, but national numbers point toward some movement toward John McCain.
The Gallup national tracker
is tied at 44-44 -- the first time it has been tied since August 1st,
and a downtick from the 3-6 point lead that Obama had held in recent days. The Rasmussen tracker has Obama with a 2-point lead (actually a point improved from yesterday), and the Economist/YouGov poll has Obama ahead by just a single point.
As for the state numbers, Rasmussen has John McCain ahead by 6 points in North Carolina, up from 3 points last month, but Obama ahead by 14 points in Maine (which we previwed this morning), an improvement from 8 points last month.
I'm not going to attempt a ton of analysis beyond what I articulated yesterday:
these are encouraging numbers for John McCain, but we know very much
about the breadth, depth or length of whatever momentum he might have.
And frankly, it may not matter very much, since once Barack Obama names
his VP candidate sometime next week, we're going to be on a roller
coaster until the election, with sleepy August afternoons like this one
long since forgotten.
--Nate Silver