By Dana Blanton

The significant news coverage Barack Obama is receiving on his foreign trip has not translated into a bounce in his numbers, a just-released FOX News poll shows. Obama now holds the slimmest possible edge over John McCain, leading by just 41 percent - 40 percent in a head-to-head contest. In fact, Obama's support is down slightly from his 45 percent - 41 percent advantage last month.

Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from July 22 to July 23. During that time Obama was traveling in Jordan, Israel and Palestinian territories. In the days before the poll was taken Obama had been touring Afghanistan and Iraq. The poll has a 3-point error margin.

Among independents, Obama has a narrow 2 percentage point edge: 34 percent to McCain's 32 percent, and 34 percent undecided.

McCain has more strength of support from his party faithful. Fully 86 percent of Republicans back McCain compared to 75 percent of Democrats that back Obama.

Given that the independent vote splits about evenly, one might expect McCain’s strength in Republican support would give him an advantage overall. The reason that fails to happen is that the pool of Republican voters is smaller than the pool of Democratic voters, which means McCain’s party-based edge has less impact on the race than it might otherwise. In this poll 42 percent of voters identify as Democrat and 33 percent Republican, and that’s about where the party identification numbers have been all year.

Click here to see the full poll results.

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