PrintApril 10, 2008
Time Poll: Clinton up 6 in PA
Hillary Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania is shrinking. The latest Time poll shows a scant 6 points seperating her from Barack Obama:
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. When leaners — voters who have not firmly decided whom to vote for but are leaning one way or the other — are added in, Clinton's six point lead grows to eight points, 49% to 41%.Hillary has had a bad two weeks so this poll actually can be construed as good news for her. But with nearly two weeks left, Obama's surge may spell big trouble because if she loses Pennsylvania, the race will be over.
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.
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.
There seem to be particularly hard feelings on the Clinton side toward Obama. Perhaps he is perceived as being the culprit in spreading the stories about Hillary's fables with regard to Bosnia and health care.
But we're far enough away from the convention that Obama, if he is the nominee, will have plenty of time to shore up support from former Clinton supporters so it probably doesn't mean that much at this point that so many Hillary backers would vote for McCain if Clinton fails to become the nominee.
