By Nick Beaudrot This is a banal point after four years of blogospheric poll watching, but Taegan Goddard writes "According to a new Pew Research poll, Sen. Barack Obama's national lead over Sen. John McCain has disappeared. The race is now a statistical tie, with Obama barely edging McCain, 46% to 43%." No. No no no no no. Just, no. With a three-point lead, even in a poll that has a 5% "margin of error", there is a very, very strong probability that Barack Obama is ahead among voters who have an opinion. Kevin Drum wrote up the primer everyone should read. In addition, the Pew survey has a sample of 2,414 registered voters, a large sample that has a "margin of error" of ... 2.5 percentage points. That's smaller than the size of his lead!
