[Soliton]

If you must search for historical antecedents, you could also look at 1980, when unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter ran a close race against Ronald Reagan

What nonsense. Bush isn't running. McCain isn't an incumbent. Unfortunately, this is a lot more like Dole/ Clinton.

[comebacknewt]

perhaps this is advantage Obama, as one theory has it that pollsters, who only use land lines to place their polling calls, are missing a lot of Obama's younger, cell-phone-only supporters.

The parallels aren't really there for that either IMO.

Clinton was a relatively popular incumbent. He held a commanding lead over Dole for almost the enitre election. IIRC, the only time Dole got as close as McCain is right now was immediately after the GOP convention.

Even at that, Clinton underperformed his poll numbers. Virtually every pollster had him comfortably above 50%, and as we all know, he actually finished below that mark.