A new national poll is going beyond saying Obama is ahead: It's predicting that Obama will win by six points.
The final Pew poll predicts that the outcome will be Obama 52%, McCain 46%, with the remainder split among third-party candidates. The top-line result among likely voters right now is Obama 49%, McCain 42%, with a ±2.5% margin of error. Last week, Obama had a much wider lead of 53%-38%.
In an interview, Pew's director of survey research Scott Keeter explained to us how they arrived at that 52%-46% predicted outcome. Pew performed a statistical analysis looking at the remaining undecideds on the basis of their demographics and their answers to issue questions, in order to project how they'll vote -- if they'll vote at all, that is.
"This is an unusual group of people, anybody who could get to this point in the campaign and not have made a decision," Keeter said. "So you have to think some of these people are not even going to vote."
Pew predicts a very narrow break of undecideds to McCain, and it won't be enough to overcome Obama's lead.
The same methodology was right on the money in 2004, predicting Bush at 51% of the vote to Kerry's 48%, and in the very-close 2000 election was slightly off in giving Bush 49% to Gore's 47%. But in an election that doesn't seem as close as close as it was in 2000, Keeter doesn't think any remaining uncertain factors will be enough to undo Obama's lead.
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