KERRY AT THE TAPE? Gallup, which has been criticized for months for undercounting Democrats, released its final pre-election poll for CNN/USA Today yesterday, showing Kerry beating Bush in Ohio 50% to 46% among likely voters and 51% to 44% among all registered voters. And the Columbus Dispatch had the following:

After nearly 80 candidate visits to Ohio, untold millions spent in ads, 500 more Americans killed in Iraq and 13,300 additional jobs lost in the state, the presidential race is back to where it was seven months ago.

Dead even.

President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are tied at just less than 50 percent in a new Dispatch Poll.

How close is this matchup? Kerry leads by a mere eight votes out of 2,880 ballots returned in the mail survey — the tightest margin ever in a final Dispatch Poll.

A similar survey in late March shortly after Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination put Bush ahead by 34 responses.

However, in the past four weeks Kerry has surged from a 7 percentage-point deficit into a tie with Bush. And several signs indicate the Massachusetts senator has gained the momentum in Ohio.

Kerry is ahead by 14 points among independent voters. He has a narrow lead in northwestern Ohio, the state’s most reliable bellwether media market. And he has brought black voters home, gaining 91 percent support among black respondents.

Meanwhile, the poll contains troubling signs for Bush. Only 44 percent say things in the nation are headed in the right direction. Fewer than half approve of his handling of Iraq and the economy. And his overall approval rating is 49 percent, a measure that many political experts say represents a ceiling on his support Tuesday.

But this election is so close in Ohio that the winner will be determined by which side gets its voters to the polls Tuesday, and by how the public perceives such late-breaking developments as the newly released video of Osama bin Laden. Perhaps the biggest question — aside from the effect of possible Election Day challenges at polling places — is how many of Ohio’s 1 million newly registered voters will cast ballots.

These newbies now represent one in eight Ohio voters, and they support Kerry by nearly a 2-1 margin in the poll.

One difference between the latest poll and the one published four weeks ago is the inclusion of more newly registered voters in the sample, whose names were in the latest available data from the secretary of state’s office. About 88 percent of the new voters — including those from Ohio’s largest counties — were among the potential poll participants.