With the campaign entering its final weekend, the presidential polling landscape remains essentially unaltered. Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney remain essentially deadlocked in most national surveys, but polls in battleground states continue to show Obama with just enough of an edge in states whose electoral votes would add up to more than the 270 needed to win.
With just four days remaining until the vote is counted, poll watchers should be on alert for any developing trends that might signal a late shift in voter preferences. As of this writing, there are a few hints, but none that rise to the level of statistical significance
The margin separating Obama and Romney in the national polls clearly narrowed following the first presidential debate on Oct. 3. Since the middle of October, however, the HuffPost Pollster poll tracking model, based on all available public polls, has shown a roughly even race for the national popular vote.
Over the past week, the national estimate has tipped to Romney by about a half a percentage point, randomly varying up or down within a range of roughly +/- 0.3 points with each successive update of the model. As of this writing, however, Romney's edge is at the low end of that range. The larger point: the current razor-thin margin is just one-tenth of 1 percentage point different, as of this writing, from what the model estimated on Oct. 16, the day of the second debate.
