MICHAEL BARONE on the election and the polls:

Mainstream media provided lavish coverage of Barack Obama’s trip abroad the week of July 21-25 and predicted he would get a bounce in the polls. Some of his supporters believe he has put the election away. Other observers employ the hackneyed and meaningless phrase, “It’s his to lose.”

The poll numbers tell a different and more nuanced story. The two national tracking polls showed Obama getting a bounce while he was in Europe, especially after his speech before 200,000 or so Berliners in the Tiergarten. Gallup showed him rising from a 46 percent-42 percent lead on July 22 to a 49 percent-40 percent lead on July 26. The Rasmussen tracking poll showed him rising from a 47 percent-45 percent lead on July 23 (reflecting the previous days’ polling) to 49 percent to 43 percent on July 26.

But over the next several days, Obama bounced back down. Gallup showed him leading by a statistically insignificant 45 percent to 44 percent as of July 31. That’s the closest the race has been in Gallup all that month. Rasmussen had him down to 48 percent to 46 percent on the same day. The world tour bounce has begun to look like a bubble.

But read the whole thing, as it’s not exactly jolly news for McCain, either. I wonder how “none of the above” would poll?