Obama ad surge yields no ‘measurable impact’

“It’s been a good month for John McCain. His movement in these key states, not large except for Minnesota, jibes with the tightening we are seeing in the national polls,” Mr. Brown said.

A national Fox News poll last week showed the race in a statistical tie, with Mr. Obama holding the slimmest of leads: 41 percent to 40 percent.

Perhaps no battleground state has received more attention from the Obama campaign than Virginia, a state where Democrats hold the governorship and are poised to pick up a second U.S. Senate seat in November. For weeks, the state’s TV markets have been saturated with Obama campaign ads on a daily basis, but the race remains in a statistical dead heat.

The Real Clear Politics Web site, which monitors all the major election polls, showed the presidential race statistically tied in every poll taken in Virginia since the beginning of June, with neither man having a lead of more than two percentage points in any survey.

As the race stood last week, the electoral count analysis by the Cook Political Report had Mr. McCain leading Mr. Obama by 240 electoral votes to 219, with 79 electoral votes in the tossup column.