The preliminary polls are in, and President Bush is well on his way to keeping his spot in the White House.

Well, kind of.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, taken after the final debate on Oct. 13 and released Sunday, shows Americans think Democratic candidate John Kerry did better in the debates than Bush did, but Bush is ahead in the popularity contest — he has 52 percent to Kerry’s 44 percent.

In another poll among registered voters, Bush leads Kerry 49 percent to 46 percent.

Of course, both polls have a margin of error of four points. And, as any statistics professor will tell you, an eight-point difference in a poll with a four-point margin of error could very well mean Bush and Kerry are tied.

Swing states are blue in one poll, red in another and still blinking in a third. Which man is winning depends on what paper you read, what channel you watch, how the stars are aligned.

Heck, you may as well flip a coin to tell you who’s winning; the results would probably tell you as much.

It’s easy to get caught up in the results of a poll, especially when the candidates are close and even more so when candidates change places more often than J. Lo changes husbands. In a heated campaign leading up to what has been billed as the most important election of our time, everyone wants to know who’s in the lead.

But horserace journalism does no one any favors.

Focusing on the numbers takes the emphasis from where it should be: the issues.

In a close election with so many undecided voters, issues are more important than anything else. And where are more people looking to find the differences candidates’ platforms? The press, be it print, broadcast or online.

Every 30 seconds that CNN spends on poll results is 30 seconds it’s not spending on differences between health care plans; every story that begins “Bush has an eight-point lead over Kerry in the most recent Gallup poll of registered voters” does nothing to explain how Bush and Kerry would tackle education.

Undecided voters are not going to be swayed by who’s leading whom; they want to know which candidate matches their beliefs.

It’s not that we never want to know who’s leading whom — it definitely matters on Election Day, when votes have been cast and everyone’s waiting to see who the newest commander in chief is going to be. But, when the candidates could easily be tied and half the people in the country say they don’t know who they want to vote for, the story isn’t “Bush leads Kerry by eight points.”

It’s “Bush and Kerry are neck and neck. Here’s how you can decide who you like.”