Once again, it’s time to play “pick a poll, any poll,” and tell any story you want.

Barack Obama’s overseas trip was one of the most widely covered events of the campaign. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has been tracking news stories since March and found 51 percent of campaign coverage that week devoted to the tour, making it the second biggest storyline in their archive.

Voters couldn’t miss all the racket. Pew found 62 percent saying they heard a lot about Obama’s trip, making it the second most widely known event of the campaign, coming just behind his securing the Democratic nomination.

But did this event – so intensely covered and so widely known – alter the dynamic of the race? That question was on the lips of pundits and reporters around the globe.

Their answer, the latest version of “pick-a-poll,” depended almost entirely on which particular poll they focused on. Depending on your poll of choice, you could say the trip was a boon, a bust or simply irrelevant.

Gallup aficionados alone had two different sets of polls, with two different results on which to rely.

Those addicted to Gallup’s daily tracking poll saw gains for Obama. What had been a narrow two-point margin on the eve of Obama’s overseas sojourn ballooned into an eight-point lead as he returned from his triumph. The Chicago Tribune’s blog declared, “The European bounce for Barack Obama has lifted the Democratic candidate for President to the greatest advantage he has held over Republican rival John McCain, according to the results today of the newest Gallup tracking poll.”

Readers of USA Today’s blog got a rather different assessment from that paper’s Gallup survey. “The Friday-Sunday poll, mostly conducted as Obama was returning from his much publicized foreign trip