Pollster.com

Polls have been consistently coming up with this 5% margin we now see in McClatchy/MSNBC.
If I were to bet I'd say Clinton +5.

Polls are misleading. The consensus seems to be Clinton +5, but that is without the undecideds. A better way to look at polls is to see what each candidate's level of support it.

Barack is now consistently polling in the low 40s. Clinton seems to be consistently polling in the mid/high 40s. That leaves ~10% undecided. If they break in a similar fashion to the reported results, then Clinton actually wins by 6-7, something like 53-47. If they break overwhelmingly for Clinton, it could be a double digit thing. What looks likely is that Obama will collect between 42-48% of the vote, meaning Clinton probably won't get the 20+ point victory she needs.

The real test will be to see if Clinton can go 10+. Look for that to be the goalpost.

Mike_in_CA, the goalpost in this election keeps moving, and always after Clinton doesn't perform as well as her campaign said she would.

@ Mike_in_California: Excellent analysis! the only thing I would add is that I would give Obama +2 based on this story from the Politico a month ago.

Another high-stakes voter registration drive just concluded in Pennsylvania, where the deadline to register as a Democrat and participate in the primary was March 24. The Pennsylvania Department of State reports that more than 234,000 voters have either newly registered as Democrats or switched from other parties, and the state hasn't finished counting the new registrations. "We put together a massive effort," said Hildebrand, saying that the numbers include "over 200k Obama supporters" - an impressive number, and likely more than 10 percent of the total turnout in the primary.

I assume about 2% of the electorate going to vote for someone else. Here's what I found:

78% White: Clinton 57%-41%
17% Black: Obama 88%-10%
5% Others:50% for each candidate

I got a surprising result.

Barack Obama: 49.4%
Hillary Clinton:48.7%

I will revise my prediction on Monday.

Unless HRC comes up with a 12%+ margin in PA, any other "win" will be neutralized by BHO's almost certain delegate lead in NC. Hillary would then need a unlikely "blowout" in IN - just to stay in the race. Even this would hardly be a persuasive argument to the remaining superdelegates.

Meanwhile the Clinton campaign is being relentlessly ground down financially by the Obama steamroller. Hillary will stay on life support for a while - if only to stanch the flow of red ink.

One last hope for HRC will be any improvement she can point to in the national matchups with BHO or JMC. These will be the polls to watch, but even this is tenuous.

My sense is that the Democratic nomination process is effectively over, and that BHO will increasingly turn his attention to JMC and the inevitable cascade of smear attacks coming from the right-wing machine. From now on, the really important polls will be head-to-head among the presumtive nominees.

It appears the Democratic voter rolls have swelled by over 300,000 new voters (> 152000) and switchers (164000):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20080419/pl_usnw/pennsylvania_voter_registration_total_hits_historic_high_for_a_primary_election

Unfortunately, the polls don't seem to ask whether the voters are new/switchers. The shrinking of Senator Clinton's lead could be due to the influx of new Democrats, and as such 45% may be as high as Senator Obama will go... UGH (yes, I support Senator Obama).

The MSNBC First Read analysis notes that many of the undecideds are in demographics favorable to Senator Clinton. FR however makes too much of the "double-digit" undecideds in the "T" - of the 8% undecideds statewide, 2% are in Pittsburgh (27% of the electorate), 3% in the "T" (28%), and just under 3% in Philly (45%).

If Senator Obama wants to keep this close, he has to win the Philly region by more than the 5% advantage he has in this poll.

@Knute: Another factor that the supers will hopefully consider is that in the latest Rasmussen poll, Senator Obama tied Senator McCain in North Carolina. So he expands the "battleground"...

I wonder how students are being polled, most of them have cell phones and I wonder if most polls take this situation under consideration. If not we could see a very diferent results on tuesday. Any idea how college students are being weighed in in the polls?

Of course a double digit win in PA would give Clinton a big boost (and the "momentum" the mass media creates), unless she loses outright, there is absolutely no reason she will drop out now. Any win in PA (when she has been outspent more than 3 to 1 there) is a win and the campaign will move on to IN and NC 2 weeks later. And even a slight win in IN gives her enough to finish out the primary season, esp. since she is expected to win WV and KY by blowouts. With a race this fluid, time is Clinton's best asset. She can hang on till June, allowing Obama to make some more mistakes, and get some sort of decision on FL and MI. She may end up tying or even slightly beating Obama in the popular vote by then too. If Clinton catches up in the popular vote and Obama has even one more controversy between now and June, the superdelegates may just tip the nomination to her - with Obama as her running mate.

What do you all make of the Zogby poll released late today? In about 48 hours he's gone from Clinton +5 (Friday) to Clinton +3 (Saturday) to Clinton +6 (today). About the middle one, he said, "We quadruple-checked our sample for Saturday and it was solid. Obama had a very good day."

On today's result, he said that the undecided are breaking for HRC and that a double-digit win for her is doable.

Has any of you who understands polling (I do not) looked at these results?

OBAMA WILL WIN PA

78% White: Clinton 55%-45% OBAMA

ITS GOING TO A SHOCKER !!

REMEMBER YOU HEARD IT FROM ME :)