A new Time magazine poll shows Senator Hillary Clinton is leading by 6 points in Pennsylvania by holding on to her core constituencies — while rival Senator Barack Obama faces some short and long term obstacles:
Backed by more than half of all white female Democrats, Hillary Clinton holds a six point lead over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, a new statewide poll by TIME reveals.
Clinton leads Obama overall 44% to 38% among all Democrats in the TIME survey, but enjoys a notably broader margin of support among white Democratic women: 56% to Obama’s 25%. More evenly split, by contrast, are white male Democrats, who prefer Clinton by a narrower margin of 44% to 36%. The survey, conducted by Abt SRBI from April 2-6 of 676 Democratic primary voters, comes less than two weeks before the crucial April 22 primary.
Meanwhile, the Obama camp clearly has some work to do to win Pennsylvania and if it wants to remove obstacles to Obama’s election, if he gets the nomination:
There also appears to be a measure of deep anti-Obama sentiment in Clinton’s Keystone State coalition. Roughly a quarter of Clinton voters — 26%, the poll found — say they “would be more likely” to vote for John McCain in the general election if Obama is eventually the Democratic nominee. By contrast, only 16% of Obama’s backers report they would be likely to vote for McCain if Clinton emerged as the party’s nominee.
Though Obama won majorities of white voters earlier in the primary season, he has struggled more recently to maintain those margins, and that trend appears to be holding in Pennsylvania. Obama is getting the votes of 80% of the state’s black Democrats but only 30% of white voters. Clinton is winning only 8% of blacks, but is backed by 51% of the white voters. Some 8% of whites and 12% of blacks are undecided.
Also remember that polls are all over the place. You can choose the one that fits your bias and tout it as the “real” good poll, and badmouth the one you disagreed with by saying its methodology is wrong (that’s the way the political game is played by political junkies).
Better yet, go to Pollster.com HERE where you can compare various polls.
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.