Gallup Daily: Obama Opens Highest Lead Yet Over Clinton

The latest Gallup Daily Tracking poll has some good news and bad news for Democratic nomination front-runner Senator Barack Obama: he has opened his widest lead yet over rival Senator Hillary Clinton but polls show him losing to presumptive GOP nominee Senator John McCain, and Clinton slightly beating McCain.

The bottom line: it’s a sign that Democratic voters are now joining many pundits and superdelegates in concluding that Obama will indeed be the Democratic party nominee, barring some game-changing event:

Gallup Poll Daily tracking of national Democratic voters from May 15-17 finds Barack Obama with an 11 percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton, 52% to 41%.

Obama’s current advantage matches the high-water mark for national Democratic support for his candidacy, previously attained in Gallup Poll Daily tracking from April 12-14.

Immediately after that polling period, Obama’s campaign entered a tumultuous phase fraught with fallout from his remarks concerning “bitter” voters in Pennsylvania, negative news coverage of his performance in the April 16 Philadelphia Democratic debate, a loss to Clinton in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, and renewed controversy surrounding his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

It would seem that all of that is now behind the Illinois senator as the current media focus is centered on the mathematical certainty that he has cinched the nomination, as well as on the war of words between Obama and John McCain over aspects of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

But the good news for Obama ends there. Obama would lose to McCain 45 to 34 percent, with Clinton only doing marginally better, beating McCain 47-45 percent. Given margin of error, the Clinton statistic isn’t strong enough to point to as evidence of Clinton being more electable.