Obama Lead Slips to Four in WaPo Poll

No reason to blare any trumpets yet, but considering they had Obama up nine last week, there's some room for optimism.

Negativity about the country's financial prospects continues to lift Obama, but he now has a narrower advantage over McCain in Post-ABC polling than he did last week. Overall, Obama holds a slim lead over McCain in the new national poll, with likely voters dividing 50 percent for Obama to 46 percent for McCain.

In the last poll, Obama led by a a nine-point margin. At that time, McCain advisers sharply criticized the results as being out-of-step with other surveys. Still, the new poll marks only the second time either of the candidates has reached 50 percent. Other national polls also indicate that Obama opened up a lead as the country's financial situation deteriorated over the past two weeks.

Not quite sure how the economic mess and Obama's lack of involvement lifts him when he lost five points, but hey, we are dealing with the Washington Post here.

They also oversampled among blacks, so consider that.

This Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone September 27-29, 2008, among a random national sample of 1,271 adults, 1,070 registered voters and 916 likely voters. The survey includes additional interviews with randomly selected African Americans, for a total of 165 black respondents.

Curious, it's three points when it becomes likely voters, and look at who is getting 4%, none other than Ralph Nader.

The economy, by far, is the most important issue at 51%. Experience checks in at 2%, explaining the media's obsession with Sarah Palin's obvious edge in experience over the community organizer.

On eight top issues, the candidates split evenly.

In other good news, global warming failed to even register as an issue (The Goracle was unavailable for comment).

Considering Obama's recent rise in the polls, this signifies an opening for McCain. A good performance by Palin Thursday could at least reassure those on edge about her, and McCain needs to do more to tie the bailout mess and Democrat complicity in the fiasco to Obama while pounding home his relation to Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson. The public is angry and now that they're reallly paying attention to who had so much stock in propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, their naive notion that Obama would actually help right the economic ship can be exploited.

Real Clear Politics has Obama by a 4.8 average. With five weeks to go, McCain better move quickly and decisively.