21 February 2008

Will Obama win Texas? Ohio?

Texas is supposed to be one of Clinton's "firewall" states. (The list of states so-designated is getting rather long.) There is surprisingly little polling in Texas, but the Pollster.com compilation of the trends shows a truly remarkable surge for Obama since 'Super Tuesday.'

The average of six polls going back to 11 Feb. has Clinton at 48.8 and Obama at 43.5. Only one of them puts Obama ahead (ARG, 14 Feb, 48-42), and one has Clinton up, 54-38 (Rasmussen, same date). These can't both be right. The two most recent polls have Clinton up, 50-45 and 50-48. Hard to interpret, but also hard to overlook the dramatic upward trend since early February (see the link above).

Meanwhile, there is nothing nearly so dramatic in Ohio. Obama's trend is steeper than Clinton's, but both are gaining over time, and Clinton's lead remains large in all polls. Why would Ohio be less sensitive to the trends elsewhere, including Texas? Or maybe we just do not know the trend: There is even less recent polling in Ohio than in Texas, and the most recent one (the only one after Potomac: Survey USA, 17-18 Feb.) has Clinton's lead at 9 points, whereas the closest of the earlier polls shows a 14-point lead for her.

Are the firewalls burning? Hard to tell.

2 Comments:

Blogger Teri375 said...

Rasmussen web site currently says that new Texas polling to be released later today shows that Clinton's lead has shrunken dramatically.

12:45 PM  
Blogger MSS said...

Well, ABC/Post (as seen at Pollster.com) has the ever-shrinking Clinton lead 1 point in Texas and 7 points in Ohio.

2:57 PM  

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