Pennsylvania Polling: Clinton 57%, Obama 37%
An ARG poll released this morning shows substantial gains in Pennsylvania for Hillary Clinton. Are Barack Obama’s “bitter” remarks last week in San Francisco having an impact on voter perceptions?
The big political buzz over the past few days has been centered on Barack Obama’s “Pa. voter bitterness” remarks in San Francisco (which, I might add, I’ve studiously avoided discussing on ASZ). A weekend ARG Research poll may, however, give an indication of the impact on the upcoming Pa. Democratic Party primary:
For the most part, the big dogs in Left Blogistan have pooh-pooh’d the furor over Obama’s statement as an out-of-context tempest in a teapot. If the ARG poll is any indication though, Pennsylvania voters appear to have a slightly different opinion.
However, it’s clear that the polling has been very volatile, and will continue to be so over the coming days. One thing we’ve learned during this primary season is that, for some reason this year, the pre-election polls have been notoriously unreliable.
Want to express your own opinion? You can go vote in this Philly.com poll from the publishers of the Philly Inquirer and Daily News.
(h/t Susie)
Update: The Blogger Who Kidnapped Josh Marshall (TBWKJM) picks up on the “ARG is unreliable” theme, but also acknowledges that a 20% shift is pretty damn dramatic, regardless of the polling service.
Interesting, the bitterness comment to me is actually defined by Hillary more accurately in terms of Grace. To me, America is going through an epiphany, and Hillary described the feeling superbly. However Mainstream Media Journalist is avoiding that Hillary was on target. Especially the Black commentators.
From American Street:
One Response to “In seeking to create greater understanding to bridge divides, a misstep requires clarification”
1. Ralph Ives Says:
April 13th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
The nation urgently needs Hillary as an alternative to the Wright-wing poseur Barack Obama. His self-serving damage control is bunk. Clearly, he has been caught out as either a panderer to his local electoral base, or now, as a panderer courting a credulous national constituency. Anyone buying his snow job ‘addressing’ his twenty year association with that church and its pastor is willfully deluded. His pastor and mentor’s views and statements were most emphatically not out of character and comprise a great deal of the attitudes prevalent in that congregation and its pastor.
No doubt Obama was down front in the cheering section during many such sermons, if not during this particularly timely revelation now available to the nation.
Obama’s latest gutter-ball was made in front of his true national constituency, San Francisco liberals with contempt for small towns and those who live in them. His true believers hold, no doubt enlightened, disdain for those who must surely be embittered small minded gun toting religious zealots terrorizing our foreign, invited or not, guests.
Never mind that he and his ilk seek the votes of those they view as culturally, and likely genetically, impoverished small-towners; it is to be expected when knaves pander to fools. They are all deluded as to who wears the cap at the end of this farce.
Hillary has served our nation under fire. Her courage and integrity are indisputable. Her experience in foreign affairs eclipses Barack’s naiveté. Hillary and Bill’s extensive experience in both foreign and domestic affairs comprise an unmatched tandem. Two for the price of one; super-size that!
How about that! This above couple pf paragraphs is close but needs to go a step further.
My view still perceives that ideal of “bitterness” is a huge example of Obama’s personal character to pile drive divisiveness with slogan’s and rant. What is sad is the same applauds, and cheers from the audience of the electorate present.
Totally grim is one could also notice the same cheers from the Neo-Con rallies that support Bush’s sick society. For me I would prefer to avoid the Obamatins. The Democratic Party does not need them or want them; they just bring cynicism and corruption to the Democrats.
if anyone thinks that we are so stupid as not to realize that the phony polls are going to use this bittergate hogwash as a way to legitimize their contrived polling results, than that person is “out of touch” with the level of intelligence of the American people. Bittergate has officially backfired. The evidence comes not from these phony polls, but from the audience in Pittsburgh shouting “NO” to HRC this morning when she tried to start her Barack Bashing.
Lmao, ARG has always been an outlier for Clinton. This is right in line with other outliers we saw before any statements about ‘bitterness’ was made (you may remember Susa’s 18-point win a week ago).
I mean, really. If ARG was right, Clinton would have won Iowa, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Maine, Delaware… I really could go on, they predicted half of Obama’s win to be Clinton wins, and Predicted much smaller wins for Obama in virtually every single race. I have never seen a case where a polling outfit has had errors so consistently in favor of one candidate. And this is a poll you’re using to base your entire argument on?
Really, just go look at the ARG website, they list their final polls for every state in the union. Their polling data has simply been insanely wrong, to the point where legitimate questions need to be asked about their methodology. Errors happen, but they don’t happen in favor of only one candidate and by 10+% margins in every single state you poll in. Thats not an error, thats a faulty model.
No argument at all, Soullite - merely an observation. I agree that ARG has been off by a bunch this year. What is striking, though, is the shift from the prior week where HRC and BHO were basically tied. And the way the math stacks up between the last two ARG polls, the “someone else” and “undecideds” have almost completely drifted to HRC. It’s hard to discern any reason other than bittergate for this dramatic of a shift.
Richard, I went to the actual poll site and they don’t have anything explaining their methodology, sampling group or anything of the like… also, they don’t have anything on their site as to who the folks behind the group are… and a quick google also doesn’t provide any info except their address.
As we know from past polls and elections, they folks doing the polls can skew the results to say whatever they want… right now, I’d bet since this is an outlier, that there is a bit of “perception shaping” going on in the media in the run up to the Penn. primary…
To see what I’m talking about do a search of our own archives for Gallup and the 2004 polls…
It’s not a 20% shift - it’s a 6% shift for Clinton and a steady set of polling for Obama. TBWKJM said a 20% spread, which IS a dramatic spread if you believe the polling methodology, but the shift is not that severe.
It’s pretty clear that, no matter what the methodology used by ARG, the poll from April 5-6 is a statistical outlier. They themselves claim a 4% MOE, and that would place Obama’s 45% right at the top end of where he is polling in the surrounding weeks. It’s Clinton’s drop-off in the April 5-6 polling and subsequent surge in the April 11-12 polling that is weird here, not the relatively minor correction around Obama’s numbers. I’d want to know a bit more about the demographic breakdown of the random sample of voters they’re getting from week to week, but they don’t collect that data. And their “likely voter model” appears to consist of asking the person being polled how likely they are to vote in the upcoming primary (see the wording of the two questions at the bottom of the polling page for PA).
This all strikes me as a completely unreliable source for making predictions. Without knowing the demographic breakdown of folks being polled we have no way of knowing how representative each sample actually is of the population of the state. Was the April 5-6 poll oversampling folks in the dense urban areas of the state? Is the April 11-12 poll oversampling voters over the age of 65? How do the random demographics compare from sample to sample? And they say that they performed 600 interviews in each sample, but that the results are from likely voters. So what portion of that 600 are saying that they’re likely to vote in the primary from sample to sample? Did the April 5-6 sample end up with a larger portion of people who are unlikely to vote, and so the percentages were over a smaller pool of likely voters? Did last weekend’s poll have a larger number of people saying they were planning to vote than usual?
I mean these numbers might mean something, but without more context I wouldn’t want to base any predictions off of them. Not even a bar bet.
Nony, I agree with your concerns, and noted my “uncomfortableness” with the reliability of any polling this year, whether from ARG, Gallup, Zogby, or whoever. Appreciate the breakdown of the numbers and methodology.
Five million people in this country suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease. During the next administration, the number will skyrocket due to the aging baby boomer population.
We need to ask our candidates what they’re going to do about it before it bankrupts Medicare and Medicaid. PA voters must ask that question now.
http://www.alz.org/election08
Mark Penn is a notoriously bad poller. Perhaps ARG uses the “touted” Penn methodology i.e., giving data I’m looking for to bollster my client. ARG has been pretty bad all year, for the reasons Soul and Nony said. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that their trend continues.
Richard, from the WSJ blog… Is Clinton’s Pennsylvania Lead Really 20 Points?
The Blogger Who Kidnapped Josh Marshall (TBWKJM) picks up on the “ARG is unreliable” theme, but also acknowledges that a 20% shift is pretty damn dramatic, regardless of the polling service.
… I never get this., I see this on Hillary blogs all the time. I don’t get it at all. Why is TPM supposed to be neutral? Why is it called out for not being so when TalkLeft, MyDD(Which pretends to be neutral too), Corrente and hordes of other sites get to be unabashedly pro-clinton without anyone batting an eye? I know he tilted towards Hillary early on, but so did a lot of voters that eventually went to Obama. People change their minds, just because someone used to agree with you doesn’t mean they always have to.
I think it is going to be real interesting to see what happens in Penn. The comments did seem to have pissed a few typical people off as apart from political people. Political people have already chosen and little can change their mind. Those typical people unfortunately still have to make a choice as to which candidate best represents them. I think the official poll will shock many people, because I have faith that the typical people of Penn. will vote in their own best interest.
And now three polls are out confirming that this has, in fact, had no discernible impact. SUSA has Clinton at +14, whereas they had her at +18 a week ago. Quinnipiac has held stead with Clinton at +6. Rasmussen has Clinton at +9, when she was at +5. None of those results are statically significant.
ARG is just a really, really terrible and possible outright biased polling outfit. People don’t really care about this.