Big state - small margin
California poll shows huge gains by Obama
A startling surge of support for Barack Obama has catapulted the Illinois senator into a virtual tie with Hillary Rodham Clinton in California’s Democratic presidential primary, a Field Poll released Saturday shows.
Arizona Sen. John McCain lengthened his lead in the state Republican primary, grabbing a 32 to 24 percent edge among likely voters over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was at 13 percent and Texas Rep. Ron Paul at 10 percent.
But the Democratic numbers are the shocker. Clinton, a longtime California favorite, saw her once-commanding lead slip to two percentage points, 36 to 34 percent, in the new survey. That’s down from the New York senator’s 12 percentage point lead in mid-January and a 25 percentage point margin over Obama in October.
But with 18 percent of Democratic voters still undecided just days before Tuesday’s primary, the election is still up for grabs, said Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director.
This pdf file of the poll has another big shocker: Obama leads slightly among those who already voted by mail. Up till now, many have assumed that the early voters broke for Clinton, and represented a firewall against late gains by Obama. Not so.
This Zogby poll shows Obama with a slight lead in California, and good news in Georgia and New Jersey as well.
I must note immediately that the Gallup and Rasmussen national tracking polls released yesterday showed a reversal of Obama’s closure. I’ll be checking today’s later on, Ras around 11AM, Gallup by 2PM.
Back to big states. Super Tuesday is a delegate hunt, and Clinton is ahead in many large states. But, since delegates will be awarded proportionally, the margin matters too. Thus, California has 370 delegates at stake; if Clinton took five percent more than Obama, that would be an edge of 19 delegates1 for her. New York has 232; let’s say Clinton’s margin there is fifteen points (possible, by some recent polls), then she would get 35 more delegates than Obama. But Obama is leading Illinois (153 delegates at stake) by over 30 points. He could easily carry his home state by a margin of 50 delegates, which would be about the same as Clinton advantage of 54 from California and New York combined. If the smaller states broke roughly evenly, and with any ordinary margins, they could not offset this virtual tie. To be clear, any result that could be called a virtual tie, say within a 30 delegate margin overall, would be a great outcome for Obama.
- Once again, there is a complex formula for awarding delegates both by state and by CD; but in big states, it’s reasonable to expect the delegate results to reflect the popular vote. [↩]
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