At 49%, support for Obama is near his record high for the year

Gallup Daily: Obama Now Leads McCain by 5 Points At 49%, support for Obama is near his record high for the year

PRINCETON, NJ -- Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Tuesday through Thursday finds Barack Obama with a five percentage point lead over John McCain in the presidential preferences of registered voters, 49% to 44%.

This is the fourth consecutive day that Obama has inched forward in voter preferences since the start of the Wall Street financial meltdown beginning with the announcement on Sunday, Sept. 14, that Lehman Brothers was headed for bankruptcy. The overall effect has been to shift the lead back to Obama after McCain had moved ahead following the Republican National Convention.

Obama's current 49% rating is close to his 50% record high reached just after the Democratic National Convention. (That came in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 30-Sept. 1.) However, his current five-point advantage is still lower than his 9-point lead in late July (following his trip to Europe and the Middle East) and his 8-point leads right after the Democratic National Convention in late August.

McCain's 44% is about midway between his record high 49% reached right after the Republican National Convention in early September, and his all-time low for the year of 40% recorded in late July.

Obama enjoyed one of his widest advantages over McCain of recent weeks in Thursday night's interviewing. It will be important to see whether the stock market's reaction today to aggressive government intervention in the crisis has an impact on the direction of the presidential race over the next few days.

(To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.) -- Lydia Saad

(Click here to see how the race currently breaks down by demographic subgroup.)

Survey Methods

For the Gallup Poll Daily tracking survey, Gallup is interviewing no fewer than 1,000 U.S. adults nationwide each day during 2008.

The general election results are based on combined data from Sept. 16-18, 2008. For results based on this sample of 2,796 registered voters, the maximum margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

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