Both Senator Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama got good poll-related news today: Clinton continued to get good news to bolster her electability argument via the latest Gallup poll — but another report suggested other polls are, in fact, working against her suggestion that the party must choose her or go down to defeat.
The issue: is Barack Obama’s political coalition actually somewhat flimsy and doomed to failure if he runs against presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain — a candidate who remains highly appealing to independent voters and Reagan Democrats? A new report suggests Obama is picking up new support among the groups he needs to defeat McCain.
Clinton’s tidbits of good news came as she was making a last-minute appeal to Democratic superdelegates, arguing the party is seemingly about to nominate someone who can’t win an election as well as she could. she could be an easier sell in swing states:And a new Gallup Poll suggested:
In the 20 states where Hillary Clinton has claimed victory in the 2008 Democratic primary and caucus elections (winning the popular vote), she has led John McCain in Gallup Poll Daily trial heats for the general election over the past two weeks of Gallup Poll Daily tracking by 50% to 43%. In those same states, Barack Obama is about tied with McCain among national registered voters, 45% to 46%.
…All of this speaks to Sen. Clinton’s claim that her primary-state victories over Obama indicate her potential superiority in the general election.
And heading into Tuesday’s primaries, Gallup showed Obama favored by Democrats over Clinton — but not a great deal:
As the end to Democratic primary and caucus voting draws near (the Puerto Rico primary on June 1 and the Montana and South Dakota primaries on June 3 will be the last), Gallup Poll Daily tracking for May 24-25 and May 27 shows that Barack Obama maintains a relatively slim 6-point lead over Hillary Clinton, 50% to 44%.
The question is whether if the race remains close (and it will likely remain that way) are superdelegates willing to take the nomination away from Obama if he is both ahead in pledged delegates and doesn’t do whoppingly-poor against McCain in polls when compared to Clinton?
In fact, this AP article is likely to be used by Obama supporters to counter the Gallup polls (and not all polls show Hillary Clinton beating McCain more than Obama or even defeating McCain compared to Obama):
Barack Obama is competing strongly against Republican John McCain for women, Catholics and other groups that have shunned him in the Democratic primaries but will be pivotal in this fall’s presidential race, early polling shows.
Significant blocs of voters who have been closely contested in recent presidential elections — or veered from one party to the other, making them true swing groups — have leaned toward Obama’s rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the primaries. Besides women and Catholics, these include the elderly, the less educated and suburbanites, leading Clinton to argue she is her party’s stronger candidate.
Even so, polls this month show the Illinois senator — assuming he clinches the Democratic nomination — leading McCain among women, running even among Catholics and suburbanites and trailing with people over age 65. Results vary by poll for those without college degrees. And though Obama trails decisively with a group that has strongly preferred Clinton — whites without college degrees — he’s doing no worse than the past two Democratic presidential candidates.
“There’s a huge philosophical difference between Republicans and Democrats,” said Roberta Stewart, 60, of Olmsted Falls, Ohio, who prefers Clinton but will back Obama. “I have to vote for the Democrat and hope for the best.
So if all of these pieces are looked at together in the same context, it does not (yet) appear to be a case of if the Democrats don’t nominate Clinton the party is doomed to defeat — because Obama is now showing signs that he’ll be supported by many key groups when they have to choose between him and McCain.
Perhaps it’s due to all of the above that a key, usually optimistic, Clinton backer now says its “very unlikely” Clinton will get the nomination:
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell – who has been one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton’s biggest backers – said Wednesday that she would make a “far better candidate” than frontrunner Barack Obama in major swing states, but is “very unlikely” she will be the Democratic nominee this fall.
“I’m a realist, and I think most likely the superdelegates will give Sen. Obama the votes he needs,” Rendell told Bloomberg Television Wednesday. “I don’t think the DNC is going to fairly adjust what happened in Florida… So I think it’s very unlikely that Senator Clinton can prevail. I think that means we’re not going to field our strongest candidate.”
One reason for Rendell’s pessimism: it is widely-believed that it’s very unlikely that Clinton will prevail when the fate of the Michigan and Florida delegations are debated at The Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee in Washington, D.C. this week.
Meanwhile, both candidates have their end-games in place for this week’s meeting..and beyond. So look for a week of political fireworks, heated rhetoric and — reports suggest — big demonstrations by Clinton supporters trying to pressure the party to rule Clinton’s way on Michigan and Florida.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.