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Close race = more viewers/readers

But also, risk aversion probably plays some sort of role here. If the consensus has Jones in a small lead over Smith, but Tom's Polling Consortium (TPC) has Jones in a big lead, TPC can end up with egg on their face if Jones doesn't win, so they put a new poll in the field, re-jiggered to favor Smith (say by a little push-polling in the question wording, over-sampling Smith-friendly groups, include/exclude cell phones, whatever other tricks they've got up their sleeve). Even if the results still come back in Jones' favor, maybe the gap is smaller, so they can say the race is tightening, and now they have their posterior covered if the election comes out in Smith's favor.