You've probably seen the Gallup poll out today that shows a mere 6 points separating Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama nationwide. More striking to me than the number though is the trendline. Here's the graph from the daily samples Gallup is now doing ...

As you can see, ten days ago, Hillary had a 20 point margin. Then starting about a week ago, Barack's been edging up and she's been edging down a little less than a point a day. What's striking to me about this is the continuing volatility even after Obama's break out in Iowa. Usually the underdog/insurgent candidate (which Obama mainly is, but not so much on the money side) has a big run up in support after an early win. But once you have that, what's the next boffo news story that drives up your numbers again? Particularly after you've fallen back? You need some major development to reshuffle the deck. And it seemed to happen around the 20th of the month.