Staring at the polls too long can send you crazy. As we suggested last week, the headline figures can be a less reliable indicator of who will win the election than some of the underlying factors – and then there is the electoral college, where a national result can hang on the votes of a few hundred people in Florida or Ohio. But even if you do look at the headline figures, neither candidate is pulling ahead enough to feel confident. The Washington Post yesterday quoted a Republican official describing the "apprehensive" mood at the top of the campaign. "Grim is too strong," the official said. "If we feel this way a week from now, that will be grim."
At present, the president is leading John Kerry by a point or two in the ABC and Zogby tracker polls, and a more slender 47.6% to 47.2% in Rasmussen. In an ideal post, newsblog would now link to Mystery Pollster, the pollster-written blog that warns you not to overestimate the precision of random sample polls. But there is no need: you cannot fail to conclude we are now entering the one-week-left-and-no-one-has-a-clue stage of the race.
