Poll Tracker

John McCain and Barack Obama are in a statistical dead heat with Obama leading 45 percent to 43 percent in a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll conducted Aug. 15-18. The margin of error is 3 points. Obama led in this poll in June by 12 points.

There has been much written and talked about regarding Obama's inability to pull away from McCain despite a political environment that's challenging for the Republicans, and some of the state-by-state polls we've been reporting show a similar result. (See today's post on North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Minnesota). A Gallup analyst has a piece today assessing Obama's supposed "under-performance" in the polls.

That being said, both men face obstacles:

• The poll found far more voters see McCain as having the right experience to be President and a third harboring questions about McCain's patriotism.
• Obama leads McCain among voters citing the economy as the top issue, his uspporters are far more enthusiastic than McCain's, and independents are tilting towards him.

Obama's favorable-to-unfavorable ratio now stands at 48 percent to 35 percent compared to 59 percent to 37 percent in June. McCain's have stayed about the same.

"All the negative attacks from the McCain campaign seem to have been paying off," said Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus.