I asked for more polls and now we have an AP/Ipsos national poll showing Barack Obama in the lead. Of course, national polling is even less relevant than usual since such a large proportion of the population has already missed its chance to vote.
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National Poll
11 Feb 2008 12:50 pm
Comments (23)
Silly pollsters. What we need are Wisconsin, Hawaii, Ohio, and Texas polls. Post haste.
What is interesting is the Obama beats McCain now. As with other polls we've seen, the more Obama campaigns and the more people get to know/see/hear him, the higher his numbers go. So it's a good sign for him. Of course, he'll have to stave off the right-wing attacks, but personally I think that people have little information about both Obama and McCain. McCain is a horrible general election candidate, and will not fair well in a year-long contest against either Democratic candidate.
See the wave. Be the wave.
I just came 4 tbsp of hope.
It's clear that the only reason that Obama is winning nationally is that this country is majority black.
I strongly suspect that the HRC campaign is making preparations to suspend, and that when they raised money last week it was to pay off debt--not to step up actual campaigning. There was some work done by Al Giordano of the Field prior to Super Tuesday suggesting the HRC campaign had in fact gone into debt. The revelations of the Clinton self-financing and now the narrative of why they fired Solis-Doyle strikes me as confirmation that th operation may very well have been operating in deficit. This opens up the possibility that when HRC made consecutive money appeals last week, it was to get the balance sheet back to zero--not to mount any new campaign efforts. That the HRC campaign never went to NOLA, and seems eerily absent from this recent Saturdays slate of contests, and also looks feeble for tomorrow, strikes me as telling.
Obama Does Best In the 'Bluest' Communities
Sen. Hillary Clinton has pulled more votes from counties that voted for George Bush in 2004 — while the Obama campaign has done best in the bluest of blue communities.
http://www.dailyyonder.com/obama-does-best-bluest-communities
By Bill Bishop and Tim Murphy
The question on the Republican side: Can Sen. John McCain reunite the party?
The question on the Democratic side: Who has a better chance of defeating McCain in November, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?
Both questions have a lot to do with how the campaigns have been playing out in rural communities.
Sen. Obama has been making the argument that he is less divisive than Sen. Clinton — that he could better appeal to the Republican voters who live outside the major cities. Nobody knows what will actually happen in a race against McCain, but in Tuesday’s primary Obama’s strength was within the most Democratic counties.
The stronger a community's Democratic vote was in the 2004 presidential race, the stronger Obama ran against Clinton last Tuesday.
The chart above shows the relationship between Obama’s percentage of the vote in California counties on February 5, 2008 and Kerry’s percentages against George W. Bush, Nov. 2, 2004. (Obama’s vote percentage is in the up-and-down axis, Kerry’s along the horizontal axis.) You can see that Obama’s margins against Clinton were higher, generally, in the same counties where Kerry’s margins were higher in ’04. Simply, the more historically Democratic the county, the higher the vote for Obama.
Clinton, meanwhile, won California as a whole. And her margin of victory over Obama tended to be higher in the counties that in 2004 voted more strongly for Republican George W. Bush.
The same pattern held true in Missouri, a state Obama won Tuesday. Again, Obama’s vote margin was the highest in the strongest Democratic counties — and then tailed off against Clinton in counties (many of them rural) that voted for Bush in 2004.
Clinton, meanwhile, gathered more votes in the “red” parts of Missouri.
What does this mean? The evidence certainly plays against type. Obama has run a campaign based largely on his ability to transcend partisanship, to bring together “red” and “blue” communities. Yet his campaign thus far has been successful largely because he’s drawing large numbers of voters from the most Democratically partisan communities in the country. San Francisco County has grown more Democratic in every election since 1976, and in 2004 Kerry won more than 80 percent. Obama won San Francisco County Tuesday with more than 52 percent of the vote. (Clinton got 44 percent.) Clinton, meanwhile, did better in more rural counties in inland California.
Clinton’s pollsters see this trend as evidence that the New York senator is really the better candidate to win voters teetering between the parties. She has the ability to reach into Republican areas and pull votes, they say. One voter-targeting firm has found that Obama supporters are bright blue voters — while those attracted to Clinton are more moderate.
(Two columnists have described this split in consumer terms. David Brooks of the New York Times says the Democratic contest is split between a “commodity” provider, Clinton, and an “experience” deliverer, Obama. The first is Safeway, the second is Whole Foods. Gerald Baker of The Times of London says the Democrats are split between latte liberals and Dunkin’ Donut Democrats.)
...So, Abramowitz concludes:
Because supporters of Clinton and Obama have almost identical ideological preferences, it should not be difficult for either group to unite behind the other candidate if he or she wins the nomination. The winning candidate will not need to move to the left or right in order to win over supporters of the defeated candidate.
True, S Brennan, that is also why Hillary trounced Obama in "bright blue" Idaho, North Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska.
David ,
Not just black, but blacks with college degrees, biding their time quaffing Clos du Bois while pondering how they'll intimate old white ladies into supporting the OBOMB at the caucus on Saturday.
I don't think they're planning to concede. They've been courting John Edwards aggressively, for example.
Besides, suggesting that they're planning to fold gives them credit for having any idea at all what they're doing at the moment. They don't really seem to. They didn't expect the contest to still be going; they certainly didn't plan to get trounced as badly as they have in the past couple of days. They're thrashing about, but it's hard to imagine that they'd drop out before March 4 -- unless they get beaten by truly Biblical numbers in Virginia and Wisconsin, I guess.
But she should surely be able to muster some sort of challenge to him in Virginia, shouldn't she? I don't know; every time I think she's finished, she comes back. I can't imagine that there's anyway to get this nomination without prying it out of her cold, dead hands....
This is sort of unexpected, because the daily tracking polls (Gallup, Rasmussen) have had Clinton with a 5-9 point lead over Obama for the past couple of days now...
David,
North Dakota caucuses
Nebraska caucuses
Idaho caucuses
Kansas caucuses
Caucuses are undemocratic, generally less than 1% of general election voters show up...I wouldn't build a case on caucuses.
Oh, right, I forgot: if it is a caucus, it doesn't count. Sorry.
though more importantly
"Obama, an Illinois senator, led McCain in the poll by 48 percent to 42 percent when people were asked which one they would prefer if the presidential race were held now. Clinton, a senator from New York, got 46 percent to McCain's 45 percent in their matchup."
But she should surely be able to muster some sort of challenge to him in Virginia, shouldn't she?
Unless the Clinton campaign can come up with a blockbuster bit of oppo between now and, um, tomorrow, I don't think it can change much on the ground.
But I'd lean in NoahB's direction, and say that there's a sense in which the camp is hoping for 'events' to intervene.
This is kinda weird, but that article you linked seems to have reversed the 46-41.
http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/client/act_dsp_pdf.cfm?name=mr080211-3topline.pdf&id=3813
Clinton still leads.
national polling is even less relevant than usual since such a large proportion of the population has already missed its chance to vote
Un, hello!? Matt?! That article is about leads in the general election. Not about who leads in the Democratic primaries. The general election is a national election, so a national poll may be appropriate, and nobody has "missed [her] chance to vote" in that election yet. Not terribly meaningful at this remove, perhaps, unless you're a voter interested in the electability question, but lots of people do remain to vote and are interested in that question.
Weird -- when I looked at the article, I was sure that the Obama-Clinton results were not there, but then Stephen's post made me look again, and there they were. They thought about fixing it and didn't? I can't read? They can't read? Many possibilities, I guess. So never mind about what I said above.
Did anyone see Karl Rove on Fox News last night with his little white board of general election numbers? He was introduced as the numbers guru (or something like that) and then whipped out a chart where he had scrawled some "facts" about the general election. Apparently, McCain will most definitely win against both Obama and Hillary because more Republicans will not vote for either of the Democratic candidates (I don't remember the exact numbers but it was quite lopsided) and more Democrats will vote for McCain. Crazily, the numbers "guru" forgot to include Independents and new voters. And even more crazy, the Fox News reporter didn't ask him about these discrepencies.
The Clintons will never quit.
I would also not be cocky about tomorrow. The polls say one thing, but this is the east coast, the Clintons stomping grounds and there are good party apparatus in all these states which they will benefit from.
Obama still has a very long row to hoe.
Abby,
RCP has the average difference at 1.6% and no tracking poll has more than a 6% difference (most are much less).
S Brennan,
You Clinton folks are just trying to smear caucuses because you're losing. It's dishonest and disgraceful. If you want to start talking about how "undemocratic" things are, take a look at our constitution, and start talking about the allocation of Senate seats. The rules were laid out before the election and everyone is subject to them. If you can't learn to play within the rules set out, take your ball and go home.
Another important comment in this poll that is overlooked is this: "In the fight for their party's nomination, Clinton has a 46 percent to 41 percent edge over Obama, the Illinois senator. That represents virtually no change from last month but a significant tightening since last year, when the New York senator led comfortably in most surveys." Momentum? maybe, but this race is not over yet!
Comments closed February 25, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
It is relevant in that it confirms that Obama has significant momentum on his side right now.
Posted by Mike | February 11, 2008 12:55 PM