Obama Opens 8 Point Lead in Most Recent Poll

Barack Obama opened his largest lead since the start of the Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll nearly two weeks ago. Obama holds a 50 percent to 42 percent advantage among likely voters, which is an increase of two points over the results from yesterday.

Obviously, there is still time left for McCain to close the gap, but it will take some significant developments for him to surge much closer or possibly into the lead. Pundits are theorizing that Colin Powell's ringing endorsement of Obama has given the Democratic candidate some fresh momentum that might very well carry him into the White House.

But Obama is also performing well on his own among the key swing voter groups. His lead with independent voters grew from 11 to 15 points and his advantage with women voters also increased from 8 to 13 percent.

The Obama campaign is in a state of flux at the moment, with the Illinois senator canceling campaign stops in a couple states to fly to Hawaii to be with his gravely ill grandmother. Michelle Obama is expected to step in and make some appearances on behalf of her husband, who is expected to return to the campaign trail within a few days.

And this is only the result of one poll. Other polls have actually shown the gap closing between John McCain and Obama. Ultimately, the sample size of the polls, often only in the thousands of respondents, leaves a significant margin for unexpected results to occur. Even exit polls, as witnessed in Florida in 2000, can be quite deceiving. The polls make for interesting news fodder in the days leading up to the actual election, but no one will know the outcome for sure until after the votes have been counted on November 4th and beyond (hopefully not too far beyond).