The latest Gallup daily tracking poll conducted Oct. 4-6 has Barack Obama leading John McCain 51 percent to 42 percent with 5 percent expressing no opinion. The margin of error is 2 percent. Obama's lead matches the 9 point high water mark he notched in July after his foreign trip. Obama has now held statistically significant leads in each daily poll since Sept. 24-26.

Democrats have consistently followed the year's campaign news in greater numbers than Republicans but the Pew Research Center said that last week the interest gap reached its peak with Democrats almost twice as likely as their GOP counterparts to say they followed political news closely. The actual figures from the June 27-30 survey were 52 percent to 28 percent.

As for the coverage, The Project for Excellence in Journalism noted in its survey of news for June 23-29 that Barack Obama continued to overshadow John McCain. Obama was featured prominently in 82 percent of all campaign stories compared to 40 percent that mentioned McCain with about a quarter of the stories focusing on divisions among Democrats and the efforts to unite the party behind Obama.