This hurts Clinton, in my estimation. Her whole argument is based upon a notion of greater electability, and after having effectively flushed that down last night with the "Yes, yes, yes" answer, this can't help. That said, it remains to be seen how closely these polls are followed.

WHO is behind the Barack Obama for President
"moo-vement"?

........ GE ....and a gaggle of other corporate elitists.

Are a lot of working class Americans Bitter?

Well, they SHOULD be: Another GE candidate for President (SOLD to the public by the Corporate-Controlled "Mainstream MEDIA)...Ronald Reagan...began the MASSIVE Robbery of the American people that has continued to this day.

About every day the TV Talking heads say: "The Rich are getting richer and everybody else is getting poorer"

...& You'd Think...after nearly 30 years the NEWS People would FINALLY ASK: (& Answer) WHY?

The answer is simple: Reagan cut the top tax rate down from the 70%'s to the low 30%'s.

(If you made $100 million & your tax rate was 70% you would pay $70 million to Uncle Sam & keep $30 million...earning interest, or dividends THE NEXT YEAR on that $30 million. If, instead, you paid $30 million in taxes and KEPT $70 million-You'd make a lot MORE money the next year on that $70 million)

Simple: tax the rich a lot less AND they damn sure WILL get a whole lot richer a whole lot faster. There was 2 PARTS to Reaganomics tho. The second part was: "The Two-Tier Wage Structure"

i.e. Pay the Top level "executives" a Whole LOT MORE; Pay everybody else a Whole LOT LESS. (Newspapers & TV in the early 80's had articles & coverage of the "Two-Tier Wage Structure" that CORPORATE America trotted out IN CONCERT with Reagan's election & tax cuts.)

IF its CORPORATE POLICY to PAY Everybody else a WHOLE LOT LESS-everybody else is going to get-a whole lot poorer...huh?

a. It was deliberate. b. Its been going on for nearly 30 years.

Next Question: Is Obama likely to fix it?
Answer: Hell No. Because THE SAME PEOPLE are running him for President - The SAME WAY they got Reagan/ Bush1 / Bush2 elected: MEDIA PROPAGANDA.

GE owns MSNBC & NBC. AOL Time Warner owns CNN. Westinghouse owns CBS. (GE is the 2nd largest corporation on the planet). They have interlocking directorships. THEY ARE the Corporate-Controllers of the Corporate-Controlled Media.

MSNBC/NBC have become the CHIEF propaganda mouthpieces of the Obama Pushers (BOPN-Barack Obama Propaganda Networks)-just like FOX has been the the Bush Propaganda Network all these years.

There are no more Journalists, no more NEWS People. They have all become court jesters & clowns doing their bit to please their corporate masters..Top Level..PAID A WHOLE LOT MORE---Media whores.

Here's a glimpse of ONE of the $Billions of TAXPAYER-RIPOFF-Reasons GE wants to "elect" Obama President: GE & Westinghouse are in the business of building nuclear power plants. GE & Westinghouse are planning to reap BILLIONS in RISK-FREE Profits from building those nukes, AND, from the $High Dollar electricity rates those nukes will produce. ( They're planning to build one of those nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania.)

The Cheney Energy Bill passed in 2005 - made it possible for the nuclear industry to begin planning to build 29 new nuclear power plants (licensing hearings are already scheduled for the first few of them).

No new nuke plants were built for 30 years because the banks wouldn't loan the money - too risky. The Cheney Energy Bill solved that problem by Guaranteeing TAXPAYER PAYBACK of any of the nuke loans that default (The Congressional Budget Office rated the risk of default at 50% or greater)

Obama voted FOR the Cheney Energy Bill. Clinton voted against. Clinton says her Energy plan does not include nuclear & if they want to be considered they will have to FIRST Make it Cheaper and find a safe way to dispose of the nuke waste.

McCain, this week on the Campaign trail said...we just have to face it we need to start building new, "CLEAN", nuclear power plants.

i.e. The Corporate Elitists are running OBAMA AND McCain for President.

("Getting off coal to go to nuclear is like giving up cigarettes to take up smoking crack".)

This is interesting, but in the end isn't this poll useless? It's impossible to derive any real meaning from it. For all we know one of the candidates has a huge lead in say Florida but is well behind McCain in all the other states. In other words, this isn't that much more meaningful than a nationwide poll. What I'd really like to see are the state by state reusults, but there aren't any links in the article to that info.

Oh . . . and ABC sucks.

Plenty of other polls have shown her unable to win states like Oregon, Washington and Iowa, even Minnesota, and many others. I'm not at all convinced she could beat McCain in all of the blue states, let alone purple ones.

Plus, and perhaps most importantly, elections are about turnout, and what polls don't capture is that Hillary is HATED by conservatives, and if she were on the ballot they would turn out in record numbers to take her down (and every other Dem down the ballot). She is an electoral Typhoid Mary, a kiss of death, and that just takes common sense to see (and the polls don't hurt).

This analysis fails to account for red states which become purple for Obama, states such as Colorado, N. Dakota, Montana, and the split Nebraska electoral votes, among others. These are states where Hillary doesn't stand a chance. Of course, she does bring in Arkansas but the lastest polling there has been dismal, and it may fail to come through for her as Tennessee failed for Gore.

Bad news for Hillary simply because anything that undercuts their claim last night was "game changing" is a serious negative. Hillary does well when she can flex her policy muscles while being gracious towards Obama (see LA debate) or when she's being tag-teamed. Neither happened last night. Instead she went on the attack from the start, and her body language hinted that she knew this wasn't where she wanted to go. She looked shifty and uncomfortable while twisting the knife. All of us have seen umpteen of these debates and know Obama can be good at them. But I suspect most voters haven't. Watching Obama take the worst from Clinton and the moderators and come out standing might end up working very well for him. He may just have proven he's as tough as her.

Moo

Considering the record number of newly registered and crossover democrats, I'd be interested to see the breakdown of those polled by state color. They give us the 2004 stats (36% Red; 33% Blue; 31% Purple) but no information regarding party affiliation to state on the recent poll. In fact, Jones even presumes that the numbers would stay the same as 2004, which I would highly doubt (granted, they were using actual voters from 2004 vs likely voters in 2008, but who would go to the effort to vote in a party's primary and then skip the general).

Can someone recommend a source to find updated data on the number of registered democrats/republicans at this point?

Not this purple state. Clinton loses in Oregon and Washington State, while Obama wins, at least according to the polls I have seen on the poll tracking section of this site. It is a huge mistake to assume these two Pacific Northwest states are blue, they aren't. They are deep imperial purple. We have a lot of independents who swing the vote. It is these voters that will be the determining factor this year.

Not sure if this was posted, but I think this was the best article I have uncovered thus far from the debate. At least Time didnt miss the overall point that is trying to be made.

Trivial Pursuit

Just in case it doesnt post properly, here is the direct link.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1731655,00.html?xid=rss-politics-cnn