In the end, Zogby and Suffolk U both had Clinton by 10% and therefore win the PA poll sweepstakes. As for PPP, whose turnout model resulted in an Obama lead of 3% as recently as this weekend, tonight they're the ones who get to eat their words and swallow their pride. And I have to say, they do so with wit and integrity over at their blog (really, every pollster should have one.)

First off, please do not call us or e-mail us and tell us we suck! We are well aware, and it does not feel good.

It's pretty easy, based on the exit polls, to see where we went wrong. We had the black vote at 18% when it turned out to be 14-15%, and we had the under 45 vote at 41% when it turned out to be 31%.

I reweighted the results from our final Pennsylvania poll to those figures for race and age, and the result of our poll was flipped- Hillary leading 49-46. Assume she pulled 60% of the undecideds and that gives her the 52-48 lead that the extrapolation from the original exit polls does.

Now, this may have been written before Hillary's lead was revealed to be as large as 10% so I'm still curious to see how they explain a 13 point differential but as Tom Jensen writes, PPP has actually been quite good overall this cycle and this result should not give the outfit a black eye. I assume they'll do far better in NC, which is PPP's home turf. Of course, if they wanted to blend in with the crowd there they haven't done a very good job. Their latest poll has Barack Obama up 25% in NC, a lead that is 10% greater than RCP's 4-poll Ave. and 16% larger than Survey USA's latest.

You thought Pennsylvania was tightening on Tuesday? It's a rough day when your best poll is one in which you lose 10 points in 3 weeks.

Note that on Tuesday, Clinton's average lead was just under 16 points. Closing the gap with Clinton is nothing we haven't seen before from Obama and in fact is good for Clinton, as long as she can leave election day the same way she left California and Ohio: with a victory that far out-performs expectations. As I wrote last week, her consistent double digit lead had made PA a will-win rather than a must-win for her. As Obama closes the gap, as he is wont to do, PA swiftly once again becomes a must-win for Clinton, which once again gives her an opportunity to gain momentum out of the state and likely means there will be an actual race there for the next 3 weeks (good news for those poor Pennsylvanians who won't feel ignored anymore.) It is a double-edged sword for Clinton though -- she's now in danger of losing the state and with it perhaps the entire nomination.

On a somewhat separate note, now that there are a total of 3 polls showing essentially a tie in Pennsylvania (including the Rasmussen from the other day), Public Policy Polling's poll would certainly appear to be vindicated (so far it is the only one to show Obama ahead, albeit within the MOE.) In fact, the PPP blog has called out Markos for dismissing the poll:

Over at Daily Kos, Kos himself calls our Pennsylvania poll 'ridiculous' and predicts a 15 point victory for Clinton.

In Texas, Kos predicted a 12 point victory for Obama, while we said Clinton would win by 6. She won by 4, which made him off by 16 points off and us off by 2 points.

If he's off by 16 points again in Pennsylvania, Obama will win by one, which will put off our poll by one single point.

I think the only thing 'ridiculous' here is Kos so flippantly writing off our poll, when our recent track record is a heck of a lot better than his.

Gotta love a pollster with a blog. It used to be that polls didn't talk back.

Fact is, while it may not please many Clinton supporters who would like to think this poll is an outlier, PPP has been ahead of the curve in many states, often releasing polls that looked like outliers that turned out to be far closer to reality than most (remember South Carolina?)

More from their blog:

The most frequent question I got from more level headed media folks yesterday was whether we were surprised at the results. Of course we were. Usually this far out from the election, we'll put out a poll based on one night of polling. But we were surprised when Obama led the poll on Monday so we did a second round on Tuesday. It showed the same results and we ran with it.

Several folks have suggested we shouldn't have released the poll because it was an outlier. Well our South Carolina and Wisconsin polls were outliers too, and at the time we released our final Texas poll it was an outlier too before several other polls showing Clinton ahead came out later in the day. Those polls all ended up being pretty good.

Just a sampling of how accurate PPP has been, check out their final poll from several states compared to the final results from those states:

Am I saying that really Obama is leading in Pennsylvania? I wouldn't go that far but I'm certainly not writing it off. Now that it's tightened to essentially a tie (by several measures), I look forward to seeing how Clinton works her magic in Pennsylvania once again or if the Senator from Illinois can turn Pennsylvania into Obama country. I'm particularly looking forward to it since beginning on April 11th I'll be on the east coast through the primary and will be back on the trail following the candidates as they woo voters in the Philadelphia area.