Progress Illinois

Survey USA has a new poll in Indiana and it shows Hillary Clinton with a nine-point lead over Barack Obama (52%-43%), a contrast to the neck-and-neck data we saw late last week. However, it's important to note that the nine-point margin represents significant tightening since Survey USA's previous poll in the state, which was released on April 14 and showed Clinton up by 16 points.

Speaking of tightening, a new Public Policy Polling survey in North Carolina shows Obama's lead over Clinton at 12 points (51%-39%), as compared to his 25-point edge in the same poll last week.

Meanwhile, our neighbors to the North also released some interesting data today. A University of Wisconsin Badger poll surveyed the two possible general election matchups and found that Obama leads John McCain by four points (47%-43%), while Clinton trails him by six points (41%-47%). This type of data only bolsters the argument that Obama is viable in a wider range of states than Clinton.

Although it was a rough weekend for Barack Obama, some new polling data should cheer him up (not to mention an endorsement this morning from The Boss himself).

According to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released last night, Hillary Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania stands at five percentage points, 46-41, suggesting that the Illinois senator weathered the media maelstorm surrounding his comments about "small town" voters. Better yet, the same poll showed Obama maintaining a solid lead in North Carolina (47-34 percent) and actually eclipsing Clinton in Indiana (40-35 percent).

Like all polls, this one should be taken with a grain of salt. As the LA Times notes, "the race remains volatile, however, because many likely voters in the Democratic primaries are still undecided -- 12% in Pennsylvania, 19% in Indiana and 17% in North Carolina." And a solid win in PA would surely help Clinton two weeks later. But as we reported in our Indiana primer, Clinton needs to win two of these states convincingly for her electability argument to hold water. Without a new boost, that might not happen.

In the wake of Barack Obama's comments about "small-town" voters, Hillary Clinton has extended her lead in some recent Pennsylvania polls. Survey USA has her up by 14 points, compared to eight a week ago. (See update below.) Rasmussen gives Clinton a nine-point edge, up from five points in their prior poll. An ARG survey showing Clinton ahead by 20 has raised a lot of eyebrows. Meanwhile, a Quinnipiac poll released this morning shows her six-point lead unchanged since last week.

It's hard to know what to make of all this data. What does seem clear is that the firestorm over Obama's remarks has halted the tightening we observed in Pennsylvania earlier this month.

But amid all this volatility in the polls, an important question remains: what kind of margin of victory does Clinton need in Pennsylvania to put a dent in Obama's pledged delegate lead?

A Congressional Quarterly analysis posted this morning suggests she would need to win by extremely large margins to really affect the pledged delegate tally:

How many delegates might each candidate win in Pennsylvania, which is the most populous of the states and territories that have yet to vote?

That answer will be mainly determined not by the sum of the votes Clinton and Obama win in Pennsylvania, but rather by the state’s parts. Pennsylvania will send 187 Democratic delegates to the party’s national convention in Denver this August, and most of them — 103 to be exact — will be allocated according to the votes the candidates receive in each of the state’s 19 congressional districts.

And a CQ Politics analysis of the political circumstances in Pennsylvania’s congressional districts, detailed below, projects an edge to Clinton — but by just 53 district-level delegates to 50 for Obama under the Democratic Party’s proportional distribution rules.

These numbers suggest that Clinton, even with a victory in Pennsylvania, would make only a small incremental gain against Obama’s overall lead in the delegate race.

As the article explains, in most districts it takes huge swings in the popular vote to affect the allocation of pledged delegates:

One doesn’t need great predictive powers to estimate how many delegates Clinton and Obama will win in most of Pennsylvania’s 19 congressional districts. That’s because the district delegates are awarded on a proportional basis, and each candidate’s delegate allocation is rounded to the nearest whole number. That means the delegate allotments can be the same for a wide range of popular vote percentages.

CQ goes on to predict the proportional delegate breakdown in each of the state's congressional districts. It's worth a look.

UPDATE: Due to a misreading of the data, this post originally stated that Survey USA showed Clinton extending her lead.  In fact, her 14-point edge in the latest poll is down from her 18-point lead a week ago.   

In recent days, there's been a rash of new polls in the remaining presidential primary states. Of particular interest are the surveys out of Pennsylvania, which show the race tightening significantly. Check out the data:

- An April 2 Morning Call poll found Clinton with an 11-point lead over Obama (49%-38%). This is down from the 14-point lead she held in the same poll on February 17 (45%-31%).

- A March 30 Strategic Vision survey gave Clinton an eight-point lead (49%-41%), down from the 18-point advantage she had in their March 9 poll (56%-38%).

- An April 1 Public Policy Polling survey found Obama in the lead by two points (43%-45%). The same shop had conducted a March 16 poll that gave Clinton a hefty 26-point edge (56%-30%).

- Four Rasmussen polls conducted over the past month have also shown steady tightening. The earliest, completed on March 5, gave Clinton a 15-point lead (52%-37%). By the most recent March 31 survey, her advantage had slimmed to 5 points (47%-42%).

While the margins vary significantly, the trends indicate that Obama is gaining ground.

Meanwhile, in our neighboring state of Indiana, the polls also show a tight race on the horizon. As Prairie State Blue noted, an April 2 Research 2000 poll found Clinton with a three-point lead (49%-46%). Two other recent polls, from ARG and Survey USA, both gave her a nine-point edge.

And in North Carolina, polls conducted in the past week or so consistently show Obama with leads in the teens.

Two polls out today show Clinton's lead slipping by varying degrees in the Keystone State. A new Rasmussen survey found Clinton just five points ahead of Obama among likely voters. That's five points down from the lead Rasmussen gave her one week ago.

Meanwhile a new SurveyUSA poll of Pennsylvania voters shows Clinton enjoying a 12 point lead over the Illinois Senator. It's still a comfortable margin, but down significantly from the 19 point lead she held over Obama in SurveyUSA's poll three weeks ago.

One factor that might account for the apparent tightening is the controversy surrounding Clinton's "misspeaking" about her trip to Bosnia. Of respondents to the Rasmussen poll, 47 percent said that they had followed that story "very closely" and 19 percent "consider that issue to be very important."

Other recent developments that may have helped Obama include his gaining the endorsement of popular Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey. In a column yesterday, Franklin and Marshall professors Terry Madonna and Michael Young posited that the Casey endorsement "may be a game-ender" for Clinton. The Obama camp has also been vastly outspending the cash-strapped Clinton campaign on advertising.

In other Pennsylvania news, while voter registration for the primary ended a week ago, the Secretary of State's office is still counting all the new forms. The final tally won't be ready until next week, but according to Time.com, the number of Democratic voters continues to skyrocket.

Though these particular polls tell us little about what's going to happen in the remaining Democratic primaries, it's notable that a recent string of national surveys show Obama holding a statistically significant lead over Clinton.

A Pew poll released on March 27 had Obama ahead by 10 points: 49 percent to Clinton's 39 percent.

Over the next two days -- March 28 and 29 -- Gallup's tracking poll found Obama with an eight-point and seven-point lead, respectively.

Then yesterday, Obama's lead in the Gallup poll bumped up to 10 points. Today, it settled back in at eight points.

Here's a chart showing the Gallup trend lines over the past three weeks or so:

Meanwhile, Rassmussen's daily tracking poll has also been finding steady leads for Obama over the past few days -- though not the statistically significant advantages logged by Gallup and Pew.

Earlier today, I theorized that a "silver lining" around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy is that it corrected the misimpression among many voters -- fueled by right-wing email smears -- that Barack Obama is a Muslim. My thought process was fairly simple: if these folks hear the word "reverend" enough, not to mention the "Christ" in Trinity United Church of Christ, they have to put two and two together at some point.

I guess I overestimated the attention being paid to such details: a Pew poll released today and conducted March 19-22 found that plenty of voters, including one in 10 Democrats, still think Obama is Muslim.

From the AP:

Fourteen percent of Republicans, 10 percent of Democrats and 8 percent of independents mistakenly think he is Muslim, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just over half of each group correctly identified him as Christian, while about a third said they don't know his religion.

The false rumor that the Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois senator is Muslim has been fanned on the Internet and conservative talk radio.

It has persisted despite the recent controversy over divisive remarks by his longtime pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Those saying they have heard a lot about Wright's comments are about as likely as others to say they think Obama is Muslim, the poll showed.

A new FOX News poll shows that the Barack Obama's public image may not have been severely damaged by recent political attacks against Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Some opponents of the Illinois Senator hoped that by charging the former pastor of Trinity United Church with anti-Americanism they could tarnish Obama by association. The FOX poll suggests the attacks aren't sticking:

By a 57%-24% margin, registered voters do not believe that Obama shares Wright's controversial views. The internals show only 17% of Democrats saying Obama shares Wright's ideas, along with 20% of independents and 36% of Republicans.

The poll also showed that 66 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of Independents said Obama's relationship with Wright has not caused them to have any doubts about the Illinois Senator. Click here (PDF) for full poll results.

It's still too soon to really appraise what kind of effect the Wright flap will have on Obama's overall numbers. But these numbers are encouraging, nonetheless.

In related news, a photo of Wright shaking hands with President Bill Clinton during a 1998 White House event has surfaced online. The photo is further proof that Wright enjoyed broad-based political support and recognition before recent media attacks tried to paint him as a black "radical."

To learn more about Wright and Trinity United, readers may want to visit this blog set up by a parishioner there.