Not enough polls have come out yet to confirm if it’s a trend, but a new poll out in North Carolina shows Democratic Senator Barack Obama has seemingly rebounded in a big way from the controversy over the fiery comments made by his pastor and Obama’s speech on race.
The Huffington Post has this item:
A new poll by Public Policy Polling (pdf) has Obama regaining a sizable lead the dissipated during the worst of the Wright controversy coverage. Obama leads in the poll by 21 points over his rival, 55-34.
Obama leads 80-14% among black voters.
Clinton leads 47-40% among white voters, which is a noticeable tightening; she led 56-30% only a week before.
The big question over the past week has been whether Obama’s speech on race and the comments by Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. would cause him to rebound and regain some support, stop the political bleeding or simply flop. There are no signs yet that it was a flop, but few concrete poll signs that it was political home run. More polls are expected out over the next week that should give a bigger clue.
The question is: in the Democratic party primaries, at least, can Obama put this controversy behind him? And, as we noted earlier HERE today Senator Hillary Clinton today signaled that she is now using the Wright issue against Obama — a development that is further likely to polarize the party, since most Democrats above all want to minimize the political damage to the party in the general election.
UPDATE: TNR’s The Stump has the same reaction to this poll. Read the post in full but here’s their update:
For what it’s worth, the final PPP polls in Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, and South Carolina were all pretty close to the mark. And when they’ve been off–like in Georgia–they’ve still been closer than most other outlets. (They don’t appear to have polled much in Super Tuesday states, or for the Potomac primary. Ditto Iowa and New Hampshire.)
UPDATE II: TPM Election Central notes that this means that if Clinton wins big in Pennsylvania her win could be offset by a big Obama win in North Carolina.
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.