Don't set your expectations too high for the ones who won't listen to actually read the entry.

He's up 1 since yesterday.  Still within the MOE for sure, but his rolling average has gone up, that's all people are saying.

Look at the history of the poll, it fluctuates quite a bit.  Clinton was up by 1 on 4/18, but three days later she was down by 10.  That poll moves a ton, and will continue to do so.

Exactly. She is experiencing a mini-bump that will go away shortly.

prove it.

looking at any ev maps, obama puts a lot more states in play. and he has a considerable number of states in which he's down within the moe, which suggests he has a chance.

and please keep in mind, hillary has gotten a free ride and has sailed along while everyone focused on obama. if she wins the nomination, don't think that will last.

Do people realize that when claiming Obama can't win states like PA, where Clinton won, the proof of Obama's weakness is his loss.

Usually, people would say is "Oh, look at the burst of registrations, Dems sure look enthused. Whoever the nominee is will hold a real advantage."

But for some reason Clinton supporter conflate her support with Republican support. As if the cold of the primay isn't going to melt away with the heat of the general when Dems come together.

This confuses me. Don't Clinton supporters expect the reverse.

And yet again, Jerome ruins a great post with a specious last paragraph. They're polls. With the exception of the primary ones, the general election ones hold meaning for dupes alone. They may provide info for those seeking broad trends going into the general, but trying to apply them for evidence Clinton or Obama is superior in November, at this early date, is a recipe for boiled and poorly seasoned fail.

You got that right. Obama is bringing in zero new states with the possible exception of Colorado.  Problem is he loses PA and maybe Michigan and has no chance in Ohio.
Hillary loses Colorado but wins Ohio, MI, and PA. Hillary is the only one who can win now. If she has Obama on her ticket it will be an electoral landslide for the Dem's and could bring us close to 60 votes in the Senate.

Super's! Do You Job!

You've never left a baseball game early because it became painfully obvious which team was going to win?

Nothing happened overnight.  It's been over the course of months.

Right now Obama is +135 per RCP.  Let's say that doesn't change with the remaining primaries (a decision that should help Clinton because of NC).

Politico says there are 240 remaining uncommitted supers.

Now...this is that crazy "math" part.  In order for Clinton to come even to Obama, she needs a +135 net from the remaining supers.  So she would need...wait for it...to go 187-53 with the supers (giving Clinton the rounding error).

187-53 among remaining supers.  Is that going to happen?

Of course, adding MI or FL into the mix makes this slightly more complicated.  But the chance that supers actually hold off until the convention, which is the only scenario in which MI and FL are relevant, I think is next to nothing.

I strongly suspect that whoever ends up with the Democratic nomination (that is, Obama), will get a 5-10 point bump when the party unifies behind them.

It's based on those 30% of Hillary Followers that are still crazed and would vote for McCain over Obama right now.

Once they have accepted their fate, and the party has had some time to heal, I expect him to pick up at least half of those people, putting him over the top by alot.

Also (and this is worth noting) In the current electoral map, Hillary has to sweep ALL THREE states, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania to win. Obama can win JUST ONE of those and any other middling contested state like MO or NC and get to 270. If he wins 2, which I believe he will, he blows McSame out of the water.

Her road to victory is FAR more fragile if you think about it.

The same thing (to a lesser extent) applies to Senator Clinton. But, given how Obama is closer to the nomination than she is, I figured I would frame my point based on what I believe to be the most likely outcome.

There's also some wisdom to be had from the comments above by ChrisKaty and Darknesse

That could be true to an extent, but it doesn't balance out in this poll. If the correct number of women were sampled, Hillary would have led this poll by 12 points. That result would not be offset significantly by a higher total black vote.

Interesting. Please explain and/or provide a link to the rules!

Well, Obama might squeeze out a few more delegates from WV out of proportion to his popular vote (as in Ohio, where he trailed Clinton by 10.4% in the vote but only by 6.4% in the count  of delegates thus far allocated) -- but continued solid wins by Clinton in a number of the remaining states will gradually bring her closer in the delegate count, put her over the top in the popular vote (possibly even with the exclusion of Michigan), and help convince super delegates that she is more electable.

  No! The new polls indicate that, if the election were held TODAY, she would beat McCain.

 TODAY! As in RIGHT NOW! The general election is not upon us yet.

 And, considering the way she's run her primary campaign (many of her own supporters have said it's been a disaster), she may well be a weak general election candidate.

I know it would take extra work, but one poll is a poor measure . . . heck ANY poll this early is a weak measure.

This whole discussion is silly this early in the season.

'538' has a better system with it's poll averages. The site-owner has his own bias, but the math remains neutral.

One of them is 6 months away from the general election.  The other is probably less than a month away from starting the campaign to shore up her base for the general election nominee.

Polls, while a middling indicator of the national mood, are largely meaningless when agents such as yourself still have a horse in the race that won't be once the primary is over.

...as Electoral-Vote.com, like I said, at one point had McCain beating Obama in New York.  I didn't realize you're PROACTIVELY using such a sorry measure, I figured it was just a lazy reliance on that other popular site.

And, by the way, I look at your maps on the home page and find they're often out of date.  I'll often see a poll and not see it reflected at all for a long time, if at all, on your map.

No one out there except Hillary supporters think current or recent past polling data support a conclusion that Hillary does better than Obama in the electoral vote.  It's pretty clearly a very mixed bag.  And no one except Hillary supporters think that, projecting ahead, Hillary is actually likely to outperform Obama in November.  Not everyone outside the Hillary camp thinks Obama will clearly do better, but no one thinks Hillary clearly will do better except you guys.  And it's sad to see such self-delusion.

There's nothing inherently biased about your approach, but it's still cherry-picking.  Any one poll can be an outlier.  A weighted combination of polls, such as that provided by www.fivethirtyeight.com, tells a somewhat different story...

Likelihood of winning vs. McCain:  Obama 44.5%, Clinton 40.2%.

Mean expected electoral votes:  Obama 255.5, Clinton 242.1.

The following states have either, but not both, Democratic candidates favored vs. McCain (figures are electoral votes, likelihood of Obama win, likelihood of Clinton win):

Pennsylvania (21 EV, 45% Obama, 68% Clinton)
Ohio (20, 40%, 67%)
Michigan (17, 59%, 33%)
Washington (11, 89%, 50%)
Wisconsin (10, 72%, 34%)
Iowa (7, 85%, 24%)
Oregon (7, 83%, 43%)
Arkansas (6, <1%, 69%)
West Virginia (5, 2%, 60%)
New Hampshire (4, 59%, 20%)

This isn't snark . . . I really think Edwards (if he had the money) could have snuck into PA and done well, since soooo many voters were tired of the bickering between Obama and HRC.

from "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" over the weekend, except theirs was a joke on the Obama supporters calling for Hillary to drop out.

You think if we get enough polling we can make this happen? I mean nothing else has done maybe if we can get teh rest of baseball to "suspend their campaigns for the World Seiries" the Cubbies can win.

...Appalachia.  The rural areas in N.C., and not just the cities, have significant numbers of black voters.  That's the thing about the South unlike the North:  there are blacks in the rural areas.

Because in terms of public policy position statements, plans, legislation, it's not there.

He may say he wants to talk about policy but when I look at actual policy what is needed is just not there in many different areas.

Take trade for example.  Most people know that labor and environmental standards are not going to do anything about the US trade deficit, wage arbitrage or the buying of US assets.

Even worse, we already have examples where these are in place in trade agreements, the Jordan Trade deal.

Right now there is slavery in Jordan, often through guest worker Visas and nothing is challenged, enforced and moreoever, you cannot enforce in a nation-state which is not in your authority, it's another sovereign nation by itself.

One needs to take on VAT (value added tax), an entire US national strategy on trade, the piecemeal tariff schedule of China....
it's a massive change and rengotiation going on here.

Just on other policy areas alone, they will have to challenge the WTO GATS in order to enact policy.  

I have never once heard, never mind in print, Obama saying he would challenge GATS (WTO General Agreement in Trade and Services).  Hillary has implied it, (not strongly enough, but at least she has some of it in her position statements).  

So, where's the beef? and as all of these Progressives running around here, do they even understand the beef and why are they not demanding the beef in order to support their candidate?

his policy is as good as Hillary's. Sometimes it lacks a bit and sometimes I feel it's better.

so no, I don't think what you're saying has any merit. His pledge to concentrate on global warming even before being sworn in is quite telling in its own right.

You may prefer Hillary but to hold on such a flimsy belief isn't really doing yourself much good.

and don't even get me started on the difference between progressive advisors and Bush advisors. It's a logical fallacy. You think that Obama putting the RIGHT advisors on AIDS or any other topic is the same as Bush putting in an advisor with the sole purpose to advance a corporate friendly agenda?

Have you been an observer in any private hand-wringing sessions?

I'm curious as to how you know these things.

Last ditch is trying to convince supers that Wright is such a huge problem that he can't overcome it. Also, trying to show how white, lower middle class voters won't vote for him. Attaching these things to one another makes a narrative that may sway some supers. I just can't see how it will sway enough supers that she can stop him from getting to 2024.