The University of South Alabama has a new poll out in the first state in the nation (alphabetically). John McCain leads Barack Obama by 24 and Hillary Clinton by 22. These numbers represent slight improvements for both Democrats since USA's previous poll, but neither Democrat has a credible shot in Alabama.
Now, for today's pop quiz ... actually it's not a pop quiz at all, since there's no right or wrong answer -- just a discussion question. Today, in Gallup's daily primary tracker, Barack Obama holds his widest lead since the poll began, with a 10-point margin over Hillary Clinton. 
If you had to put money on it, would you guess that in next Sunday's Gallup poll -- that's April 6th -- Obama's lead over Clinton will be more than 10 points, or less than 10 points?
Sunday, March 30, 2008
A Boring Poll, and a Pop Quiz
-- Nate at 8:26 PM
Labels: alabama, pop quiz, today's polls
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15 comments
I'd love to see more than ten points, but given the history there, I'll go with less than ten points.
I think it will regress toward the mean within a week or ten days. Clinton is is still suffering from the aftermath of her Bosnian misadventure and no major story for or against either candidate has superceded it yet. She needs a bounce before all her tax returns are disclosed; there's likely to be no good news and possibly some really bad news for Clinton in that.
A more interesting thing to observe over the next week is how much, if at all, Obama manages to close the gap in Pennsylvania, since this is PA week for him.
Well, Gallup trackers are lagging indicators because the fresh higher numbers get folded into the older lower numbers... which is to say it's going to keep going up... until it starts going down.
How's that for analysis?
The Obama fanboy in me wants to say it'll keep going up, but then when his numbers went down during the Wright brouhaha I was certain (and correct) that it was a temporary anti-bump, so I don't have reason to believe the Bosnia episode will be any different. On the other hand, I'm not sure what kind of Big Speech Hillary could use to get past this one, so maybe it just gets worse from here for her.
At any rate, if I had to put money on it, I'd say his lead will come down again. But that's partly because my luck is bad enough to count on :-)
Less. I think this is his ceiling. That's how divided the party is right now. But I'd love to be wrong on this one.
Less. I think this is his ceiling. That's how divided the party is right now. But I'd love to be wrong on this one.
I'm going to bet on a bump. Hillary will create another story out of whole cloth and get called on it, while Obama gets more SuperDelegate endorsements +6 coming tomorrow.
Oh, and my home state has our next round of conventioning, where at worst he will match his 1st round caucus numbers, but as Hillary has told her own delegates they don't matter, there is a chance for another shift towards him there.
I would have said "under," but I spent some time Friday looking at the numbers and trying to guess dailies from them and compare them to the keystone events of the last few weeks.
Best guess (this is all fuzzy, of course) is that only about half of Clinton's recent dip can be attributed to the Tuzla story. I have to assume the remaining seperation is due to the "Tonya Harding" narrative starting to get some traction and some soft Clinton supporters accepting the idea that Obama IS the de facto nominee, it just needs some time to be official.
So I'd guess it'll be pretty static as that plays against the soft rebound from Tuzla, but if you made me pick up/down, I'd say it's more likely to increase, especially if the word on 7 new Superdelegates coming out in a day or two holds true.
I think there will be less than 10%chance any of you will get laid by April 6th.
Under the principle of regression to the mean, I'd put my money on LESS than 10%.
OK, after reading everyone else's guesses, I'm changing mine. Somebody's gotta be a contrarian, and I'm sticking my neck out.
It's a trend! It's a trend!
I think it's a trend and likely to go up slightly by next week. It's likely to level out over the next few weeks and regress slightly perhaps but it depends on how Obama's good news keeps going. The additional Texas delegates allowing discussion on how he actually won Texas combined with Clinton's not paying her bills will drive the next week's numbers.
KS Rose
So,
I think this upcoming weeks biggest determining factor is going to be the upcoming "superdelegate" surge in terms of the expected significant number of obama superdelegate supporters coming out in the open. I think once that happens alot of undecided voters will feel more confident in choosing Barack but by the end of the week. In response to Obama's superdelegate supporters, Clinton's own supers will come out, but I doubt in enough time for them o be reflected in the end of the week polls. So, I see an increase in Obama poll numbers for this week, but the numbers will eventually level out to 10 points again by the time of the big run into PA.
I think it will be less than 10 but still significant (around 8 or so). I am thinking that Sen. Clinton had decent fundraising numbers and she will get a mini bump out of that.
Marc, my question in response is: what leads you to believe Clinton HAS any latent superdelegate support?
Other than Murtha, she's picked up virtually nothing since Super Tuesday -- the occasional "vote-with-my-constituency" SD, but she's lost to Obama as much as she's picked up from neutrals.
I think we saw Clinton's big bag of superdelegate endorsements -- 6 to 12 months ago. If you were a Superdelegate in, say, July, and decided you were going to endorse Hillary, why would you wait? You'd do it right away to get on the good list, and there was virtually no downside, because she was going to win anyway.
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