The Bruins and Tarheels each got crushed, so there goes my finals bracket. In other NC news, a couple of polls come out of NC that show conflicting numbers, and a debate that probably won't happen.
Rasmussen has blow out numbers:
April March
Obama 56 (47)
Clinton 33 (40)
Not Sure 11 (14)
That's a huge swing to Obama:
There remains an enormous racial divide in the North Carolina data. Obama leads 86% to 9% among African-American voters. Clinton holds a 47% to 38% advantage among white voters in the Tar Heel State. A month ago, Obama led by fifty-three points among African-Americans while Clinton led by twenty points among White voters.
With black voters lining up behind Obama like that, Clinton would need to win about 70 percent of the white vote to take the state. Rasmussen also finds that "56% of Clinton Voters Say They’re Not Likely to Vote for Obama Against McCain", which seems absurdly high, but when you break it down, it results in about 18 percent of NC Democrats voting Republican in the Presidential, which isn't that uncommon in the state. But it of course means that NC is easily McCain's in the GE.
A McClatchy poll shows it closer:
Obama 35
Clinton 26
Not Sure 39
Among likely primary voters, the two virtually split the support of white voters and women while Obama has a strong -- 59 percent to 7 percent -- lead among African Americans. Obama and Clinton are essentially tied among women; Obama has a slight edge among men. Clinton leads Obama among voters over 55; Obama leads among everyone else.
That's a ton of undecideds, which could point to fluidity, and certainly Clinton hopes that a win in PA shakes up the momentum going into NC (which the Obama campaign wants to avoid happening), and that brings us to the debate issue.
The CBS in NC debate is in limbo. The Obama campaign had wanted the debate prior to the PA contest, not after its results are known to NC voters, so they accepted, and Clinton didn't, a debate on the 19th in NC, just three days after another debate in PA, and three days prior to the contest on the 22nd in PA. Its obvious that all Obama was trying to do was make it all about potentially shaking up the PA contest, and Clinton didn't want to have the NC debate prior to PA.
Then, CBS nixed the debate date on the 19th, saying it was on passover, and replaced it with one on the 27th. Clinton accepted and Obama hasn't, but in their begging off, the Obama spokesman inadvertently exposes this political motive:
"We had proposed a debate in North Carolina before the 22nd of April," said Obama spokesman Dan Leistikow. "Apparently, the Clinton folks vetoed that. We haven't made a decision whether the later date fits into our schedule."
It's not often that a campaigns strategery gets so obviously exposed by a candidate spokesman as Leistikow does here for Obama.
