Today is likely to be a day of highly-watched final polls surfacing in the Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary but the latest Zogby poll underscores a trend: undecided voters now seem to be breaking for Senator Hillary Clinton, who most polls now show poised to defeat Senator Barack Obama:
The final weekend before tomorrow’s important primary election in Pennsylvania was good for New York’s Hillary Clinton, as she made a definitive move toward victory over rival Illinois’ Barack Obama, a fresh Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows.
She gained two points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, and she now leads 48% to 42%, the latest polling shows. Meanwhile, the undecideds dropped by two points. Her edge was three points yesterday but had wobbled within a tight margin. Clinton’s advantage is still within the margin of error, but she is close to getting beyond it as Election Day looms.
Trending is everything in polling, and the trends in Zogby have been for Clinton.
Zogby believes Clinton could win the 10 point lead she and her campaign hope to get to boost her campaign in remaining primary states and add weight to her argument that she is the candidate who has the best chance of winning vital big states in the general election:
A big one-day of polling for Clinton. If a 10-point victory is the pundit-driven threshold she needs on Tuesday, it looks like she can do it. This does not look like a one-day anomaly—undecideds dropped to only 5% in this latest single day of polling, and they are breaking Clinton’s way. As I suggested yesterday, if white and Catholic voters, who still are the biggest portion of undecideds, actually vote, Clinton will have her double-digit victory. Just today alone, she polled 53% to Obama’s 38%.
She had big pickups of support in the western region, among voters 50-65, and among women. She has tightened Obama’s lead among men and she maintains her Catholic base. For the first time in our poll, Clinton climbs into double digits among African Americans.”
The trending now in polls clearly is against Obama. While it’s always possible that there could be are result far different from the polls and a dramatic upset — we have already seen that several times in Campaign 2008 — just looking at the list and graph at Pollster.com now show a changed picture. Here’s the latest chart that takes into account all of the polls — showing a much bigger gap than just a few days ago between Clinton and Obama with Clinton on the ascent:
UPDATE: To show you how many contradictory bits of info have to be factored in, read this from The Politico:
An historic spike in Democratic voter registrations in Pennsylvania could help Barack Obama cut into Hillary Clinton’s vote in Tuesday’s primary, robbing her of the big victory margin she needs to justify continuing the primary fight.
The changing party demographics also are contributing to an overall bluing of the Keystone State that could dim Republican John McCain’s hopes of competing there in the fall.
A county-by-county analysis by Politico suggests that the hard-fought primary between Obama and Clinton has accelerated an ongoing partisan shift in Pennsylvania that could soon move it out of the battleground presidential states and ripple across congressional races this fall, as well.
…In Delaware County, a Philadelphia suburb once home to a storied Republican machine, nearly 14,000 voters have switched their party affiliation to Democratic since January compared to just 768 who became Republicans.
Those party-switchers now represent about 7 percent of the roughly 2 million Democratic voters expected to turnout Tuesday, said Madonna.
A poll of those switchers and new registrants released by Madonna last week found that Obama was the preferred candidate for 62 percent of them. Clinton insiders said they are also bracing for the same 60-40 split among newly registered Democrats.
And then this from the BBC’s Justin Webb’s blog:
Well here we go. Pennsylvania is the next potential moment of truth. Though the truth is that the moment of truth has probably already passed.
An interesting take here on the Obama campaign in Philly – is it such a bad thing if they alter the way things have been done in the past ?
A Clinton fundraiser sits in my kitchen and reveals that the money is still flowing in BUT small sums mainly from individuals giving as little as $25 a time. It’s not enough to be viable.
Approaches to Clinton people with access to sources of money are coming now from the Obama folk. The vultures are circling.
But the bottom line is: polling trends (at least THIS time Monday morning) do not look good for Obama. One argument being made by his supporters is that the polls don’t take into account all of the new and young voters. Perhaps. Tomorrow will determine if that’s an accurate statement or wishful spin.
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.