Obama opens small margin over McCain, poll finds

By Steven Thomma
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
WASHINGTON _ Barack Obama leads John McCain nationally by a margin of 46 percent to 42 percent, opening his biggest edge since the campaign entered the fall stretch after the two major party conventions, according to a new Ipsos-McClatchy poll.
Obama's four-point lead marks steady if small gains the Illinois Democrat has made in the poll since Labor Day. Over four weekly surveys, he has gone from being down by one point to tied, up by one point and now up by four.
One key reason for his gain over the past week could be Friday's kickoff debate between the two major party candidates. A separate Ipsos-McClatchy online poll of undecided voters, taken Monday, found that a majority thought that Obama did better in the 90-minute face-off by a margin of nearly 3-2. The online survey isn't a random sample of the population and has no statistical margin of error; its value is that it's illustrative of public attitudes, much like a focus group, although it's not scientific.
Despite Obama's gains, the race remains close, and neither candidate has won over a majority of registered voters.
The telephone survey of registered voters found 46 percent supporting Obama, 42 percent for McCain, 2 percent for independent candidate Ralph Nader and 1 percent for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr. Another 9 percent were undecided.
Nearly one in 10 voters with a candidate preference say they could still change their minds, underscoring the stakes for the vice presidential debate on Thursday night and the two remaining presidential debates on Oct. 7 and Oct 15. Each will be televised nationally at 9 p.m. EDT.
Despite the turmoil on Wall Street and the nation and the collapse of several major banks, a solid majority of registered voters expressed confidence in the security of their bank accounts.
The poll found 70 percent confident in the security of their checking accounts or money market accounts and 27 percent not confident. Similarly, it found 72 percent confident in the safety of their savings accounts.
A smaller but still solid majority of 60 percent said they were confident in the ability of the federal government to cover the costs of federal deposit insurance in the case of bank failures.
Better than one out of three, 36 percent, said they didn't have confidence in the federal government's bank insurance, despite the fact that no American has ever lost money in an account insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

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