I won’t predict percentages, but I will predict (based on past patterns) that on the Friday before the primary, some anonymous Clinton operative will leak something nasty about Obama to the media, and the media will spend the whole weekend talking about it.
Worse than the Wright debacle? I wonder if he’s got anything worse? And judging how he handled that one I’m not all that concerned. She may bring that up again…but we’ll see. I guess I’m not all that concerned that Clinton is going to blow Obama out of the water in PA.
She’ll tell everyone that he’s a Browns fan. That should do it! And for Maryland, his name will be Barack Irsay Obama.
I’ve heard the same thing. The Casey family is very respected in Pennsylvania. The endorsement is nothing to sneeze at.
I hope Obama doesn’t get the popular vote and Hillary wins at the convention. I’ve heard from a couple sources that Hillary has the edge (by about 20) in superdelegates. That could change if Obama wins out, of course. It could get very ugly.
The first link shows how delegate math helps her, but the delegate count is a foregone conclusion. If she pulled the same as Obama in Texas, winning the delegates but losing the popular vote? That would be a major loss. The attention will be on the popular vote. And this time I agree with Bill … she needs to win big big big … to have even the most outside chance still left … 20 something% or more. I expect that he’ll keep it near 10% and maybe below 5%. And the odds of him actually winning the popular vote there are at least better than the odds of her winning by that 20% plus.
I think the narrative will increasingly become the futility of her campaign and the recognition of her as a potential spoiler to not only Obama but the Congressional outcomes.
Are the poll takers on strike? The polls in PA are as scarce as hen’s teeth. One gets the feeling that the wheels are off the Clinton wagon and she is fading fast. That Bosnian fish story and threatening the Speaker is going to be hard to overcome.
That’s my worst-case scenario, and what I’m really afraid of. McCain, for all his blustering of the past four or five years, is likely to be quite a bit more reasonable than Bush if he actually gets into the White House (I say this from past performance before he went into Presidential Campaign Mode in 2004). However, it will be much more important if we end up having a crippled nominee come August that we get more Democrats in both houses of Congress, and a crippled nominee isn’t going to have the kind of coattails a strong one will.
Do you think Obama would be sufficiently crippled if Clinton rides this train all the way to Denver and he takes it anyway?
Personally, he has expressed amazing resolve in this campaign, and an uncanny ability to come out on top with delegates and pop vote.
You know I’m on your side on Obama…and I truly believe, with all other things being equal, he has much, much longer coattails than Clinton does. I’m HOPING that even if she takes this to Denver, it won’t cripple him. I don’t know either way, though.
Neither do I. I surmise he’ll play his cards close and only take calculated risks. He understands the odds are in his favor, and he doesn’t want to blow that I’m sure.
The polls won’t be interesting for another week or two, I think.
ARG has a 3/27 poll showing approximately the same as their last results (12% difference). I’m not real keen on ARG as their numbers usually seem to be more extreme than those of the other firms but it’s what we have. I’m guessing no one wants to pay the other firms to start regular polling this far out.
Edit: To be fair to ARG, they were the only ones who got Wisconsin correct while everyone else was predicting a close primary with a possible Clinton upset.
Not quite, but very close. The Obama campaign used their February wins in the Potomac primaries to apply pressure to superdelegates who supported Hillary despite coming from Obama-leaning districts in Obama-leaning states. I think it’s a reasonable question for either candidate to ask the other’s superdelegates.
I don’t know for certain that the strategist quoted here is from the Obama campaign, but I have seen the quotation elsewhere.
New poll shows Obama overtaking Clinton in PA. (Link is to a Democratic Underground thread – it links to the actual release and poll results in pdf but I can’t seem to download it.)
That poll has a lot of problems with it, and I’d go with other polls that show him behind but getting the gap under 10 points.
Such as?
In other news, Obama raises over $40 million in March – and of the over 442,000 donors, more than 218,000 were first-time donors, meaning there’s a huge pool of money still available to tap as the campaign goes on.
The Clinton campaign as I write this hasn’t released their numbers but are saying the total will be “close to $20 million”. I wonder whther they’ll be paying off that $8.7 million in debts from as far back as Iowa?
Meanwhile, Gallup has polled to see which candidates Americans least wish to become President. And the numbers are: McCain 40%, Clinton 36%, and Obama 20% – how’s that for the “he can’t get elected” argument?
For an in-depth look at the Clinton campaign’s reactions to Obama’s March fund-raising numbers, go here. 
The biggest problem is that the same polling outfit two and a half weeks ago had Clinton ahead by 26 points.
Now, all the polls are showing Obama trending up and Clinton losing ground, but this is too great a disparity to put much reliance on this pollster’s numbers, I believe.
I can’t find the analysis I’d previously read arguing that Public Policy Polling’s numbers are generally less reliable than other companies’, so you’ll have to take my word on that part.
Thanks. Their own report claims they were the most accurate for the recent primaries but I guess they would say that. My gut guess is that the poll is picking up what they claim - Democrats realising the damage being done.
They also had Obama’s NC lead increasing from +1 to +21 in a week.
I’d trust ARG and Zogby before I’d trust them. RCP has apparently decided to show ARG’s polling numbers, but not include them in their averages. They should do the same with PPP. For my own analyses (such as they are), I’ve already been making that adjustment on my own.
ETA: Excluding PPP, RCP’s PA poll average would be Clinton 50.0, Obama 41.3.