With a solid majority of voters concluding that John Kerry outperformed George W. Bush in the first presidential debate on Thursday, the president’s lead in the race for the White House has vanished, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. In the first national telephone poll using a fresh sample, NEWSWEEK found the race now statistically tied among all registered voters, 47 percent of whom say they would vote for Kerry and 45 percent for George W. Bush in a three-way race.

[T]hey decreased Republican sampling by 5 percentage points and increased Democratic sampling by 6 full percentage points. Furthermore, this "poll" strictly was limited to the "Pacific and Mountain time zones." In other words, registered voters from the following states completely were excluded: Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, and the entire old south.