Mark Penn couldn't have asked for a better result if he'd polled it himself. A new Quinnipiac University survey released today of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania Democratic voters seems to bolster Hillary Clinton's big state argument that she is better suited to win the "big states that a Democrat needs in November" than Barack Obama is.
What's interesting about Clinton's strength here is that the poll was taken over a full week, from Mar. 24-31, during which Obama had momentum nationally, apparently in the wake of criticism over Clinton's Bosnia remarks, although that's waned in recent days. These three states seem to be momentum-proof for Obama, which on some level should come as little surprise considering the states we're dealing with: Obama never campaigned in Florida, Clinton won Ohio handily and she appears poised to win Pennsylvania by a similar margin (Quinnipiac has her up 9%.) Now, while there has proven in the past to be little correlation between a candidate's primary performance and his or her general election head-to-head match up performance, there are some fundamentals to these three states in the polling that should be of concern to the Obama campaign:
"When it comes to November, Sen. Hillary Clinton's strength is a big edge over Sen. Barack Obama among white voters, who have not given a majority of their votes to a Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson in 1964," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute." [...]"At least for now, Sen. Clinton's argument that she is the better general election candidate in these key battleground states appears to have some validity," said Brown. "In this survey, her strength among white voters is why she runs better against Sen. McCain than does Sen. Obama.
"Roughly one in five Democrats in the three states say they will vote for McCain against Obama, but less than 10 percent say they would vote for McCain over Clinton. Among white Democrats, 23 percent defect to McCain in a matchup with Obama, but only 11 percent defect when Clinton is the Democratic candidate."
This "white flight" to McCain in the event of an Obama nomination is a growing concern for Obama. Even The Gallup daily tracking poll, which Obama has dominated in the Democratic primary results of late, shows a similar trend. Looking at the poll's general election match-ups between each of the Democrats and McCain from the period of March 7-29, Clinton averages 2 points better than McCain while Obama is back by 1. The reason?
In general, Clinton does better among all three groups of white Democrats against McCain than does Obama. The difference between Obama and Clinton is largest among conservative white Democrats. In fact, among this group, Obama manages to get only 50% of the vote to McCain's 35%, while Clinton wins by a much larger 68% to 25% margin.
Obama has his strengths as well, including, obviously, African-Americans and Independents among whom Obama polls better against McCain than Clinton does, but Obama's white defector problem could be seen as a larger problem for him from an electability standpoint since this is the classic swing voter group, the so-called Reagan Democrats, that we'll need in the fall to win, especially against McCain.
It's impossible not to look at these numbers in the context of the Pastor Wright controversy. There's a reason that, as Harold Ickes admitted yesterday, the Clinton folks are raising Wright to the superdelegates. As Bloomberg News is finding on the ground in Indiana, the trepidation some white voters feel about Obama as a result of Wright controversy isn't based so much on the fear that he shares Wright's views as much as it is on the fear that his connection to Wright makes him far more vulnerable in the general to the right-wing smear machine.
"As things came out regarding some of the things his pastor has said, I got concerned," said Helmer, a 36-year-old respiratory therapist and mother of two in Evansville, Indiana.Interviews with dozens of Democrats in this overwhelmingly white region -- where voters will go to the polls in the May 6 primary -- suggest residual concerns over the controversy involving Obama's former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. [...]
Still, there are stirrings of unease among white voters, including those who fear the issue will hurt Obama in a general election. Pew also found that 39 percent of all white voters who had heard of the controversy, including Republicans and independents, said it made them less favorable toward Obama.
All of which points to yet another reason a continued Democratic primary race is a good thing should Obama become the eventual nominee: the voters that are uncertain about Obama nationally are the very same voters that he needs to win over in Pennsylvania and Indiana over the coming month to beat Hillary Clinton in those states. So as he campaigns there over these next few weeks, Obama will be forced to try to find the perfect recipe for how he can appeal to them, assuage their fears and hopefully prevent them from defecting to McCain in the fall should he be at the top of the ticket in the general. To this end, I'd advise Obama to stay out of a bowling alley between now and November.
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