A fresh North Dakota poll released Thursday shows Barack Obama leading John McCain by 3 points, 44 percent to 41 percent, within the poll’s 4.4 percent margin of error. A poll released Monday by The Forum newspaper had Obama and McCain in a statistical dead heat, Obama at 45 percent and McCain at 43 percent.

North Dakota was a tied race early this summer until McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate skewed the polls decidedly toward McCain. With two polls now showing a tied race, the Palin bump may be fading in the historically Republican-voting state, which has not gone for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide win against Barry Goldwater in 1964.