Thursday, March 06, 2008

A Big Swing To Hillary?

It might be harder to claim that Clinton did not pick up some much needed momentum after her three wins on Tuesday. Take a look at the last two Gallup tracking polls:

Feb. 21-24: Obama 51 Clinton 39

Mar. 3-5: Clinton 48 Obama 44

So that represents a 16 point swing in Clinton's favor in little over a week.

The other tracking poll, Rasmussen, has Clinton up as well (by 5 points).

Clinton has also gotten a bounce in Pennsylvania as well. She has also narrowed Obama's lead in North Carolina from double digits to only four:

“This isn’t actually particularly good news for Obama,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “He’s been leading in most North Carolina polls over the last three weeks by double digits. But as the national polls and last night’s results have shown Clinton inching closer, the same trend has occurred in North Carolina.”

For the moment, Obamania is stalling. It remains to be seen if Clinton can maintain her good run. Obama can try to hype Wyoming (which won't work), but if places like North Carolina continue to tighten up he will have a big problem on his hands.

And for all of us political junkies, the prospect of a brokered convention begins to loom large, since no one really believes either candidate will bow out now.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is fascinating race. It's been pretty obvious since Super Tuesday that it was going to come down to the super-delegates, because neither candidate would be able to capture enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination. A week ago, I thought that the super-delegates would go to Obama, because he won the popular vote and the desire to avoid alienating the African-American base.

Now, I'm not so sure after Hillary's victories in TX and OH. I believe that HRC is likely the more electable of the 2 candidates, owing to her natural base, women, dwarfing Obama's natural base. If HRC wins Pennsylvania and a few of the remaining states, the super-delgates could go with HRC on the basis of apportioning themselves according to how their state voted in the primaries. Given the size of the states HRC won, I think this kind of rule would put HRC over the top The question is whether the delegates have the courage to risk throwing Obama overboard in favor of HRC's argument for electability.