Having secured enough delegates to be assured of the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama used his remarks Tuesday night in part to turn his focus toward John McCain and the general election. But Hillary Rodham Clinton refused to throw in the towel during her own election-night speech before supporters in New York, casting an aura of ambiguity over the night's events.
Polling data from USA Today/Gallup shows that, while Obama had established a double-digit lead over Clinton among Democrats nationally even before Tuesday's vote, the two continue to garner equal levels of support relative to McCain. In a survey conducted May 30 to June 1, 53 percent of Democrats voiced their support for Obama, compared with 40 percent for Clinton. Among all adults polled, 49 percent reported that they would choose Obama over McCain in a general election, while 44 percent chose McCain. Clinton garnered nearly the same results, beating out McCain, 48 percent to 44 percent. Gallup's daily tracking numbers from Tuesday found the matchups even closer, with both candidates running nearly dead even against McCain.
Adding to the signs of uncertainty surrounding the primary's denouement, nearly six in 10 Democrats told USA Today and Gallup pollsters that they still were not ready to see Clinton drop out of the race -- despite the fact that half of all adults polled said the prolonged Democratic contest has hurt the party's chances of winning in November (only a 44-percent plurality of Democrats agreed).
The good news for Democrats? Both Obama and Clinton improved their standing relative to McCain over the past month, with Obama enjoying a 6-point swing in his favor against the presumptive Republican nominee and Clinton a 7-point change, suggesting that the wind could be behind the Democrats' backs as they move into the general election.
Riding An Anti-Republican Wave?
A new Democracy Corps survey [PDF] conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (D) suggests that even in Republican congressional districts, disregard for the current administration is high, stoking Democratic hopes that the party could expand the battleground for November. "2008 can be another wave election for Democrats," the left-leaning group claims in its analysis.
GQR polled 1,600 likely voters from 45 Republican-held "swing" districts and found that, even here, voters in both parties are fed up with the status quo. Three-quarters of respondents told pollsters that they think the country is on the wrong track, a finding similar to numbers seen in most national surveys. What's more, half said they "strongly disapprove" of President Bush's job performance.
Forty-six percent of those surveyed said they plan to vote Democratic for Congress, while 39 percent said they would choose their local Republican (in each case, pollsters cited the incumbents by name, comparing them to a generic "Democratic candidate"). The survey also suggests that, in the presidential contest, Obama is running even with McCain in such pro-Republican areas. Forty-six percent of respondents said they would vote for Obama in the general election, the same portion who said they would choose McCain.
But respondents said that the presidential contest had little bearing on their downballot preferences, suggesting that hype about the length of Obama's electoral coattails might prove irrelevant. When voters were asked whether they would be more or less likely to vote for the Democratic congressional candidate in their district with Obama at the top of the ticket, a 63-percent majority said his nomination would make no difference in their decision.
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