Two polls released Monday gave conflicting views of the presidential race: President Obama and Mitt Romney are in a statistical dead heat in Gallup's inaugural daily tracking poll, while a CNN/ORC International poll showed Obama with a 9-point lead among registered voters.
The Gallup poll, which began on April 11 and will be reported daily on Gallup.com on the basis of continuous five-day rolling averages, shows Romney with 47 percent and Obama with 45 percent. Two percent of those surveyed chose "other" and the rest said they didn't know or wouldn't say.
In the CNN poll, 52 percent of registered voters say if the presidential election were held today, they would vote for the president, with 43 percent saying they would cast a ballot for Romney.
The polls also reflected stark differences among independent voters. In the Gallup poll, Romney led 45 percent to 39 percent, with 12 percent undecided; in the CNN poll, Obama holds a 48 percent to 43 percent edge.
Gallup's results are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 2,265 registered voters, ages 18 and older, living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of registered voters, the maximum margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The CNN poll was conducted April 13-15, with 1,015 adult Americans, including 910 registered voters, questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error for registered voters is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
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