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Poll: Indiana Primary A Statistical Tie

A new Research 2000 poll of Indiana shows a dead heat in this key primary: Obama 48%, Clinton 47%. With a five percent margin of error, this one is anybody's game.

This is the only state left that doesn't have a clear frontrunner going in. As such, expect both campaigns to put a lot of resources here leading up to the May 6 primary. A Clinton win would give her campaign a big boost of momentum, while an Obama victory could potentially lock up the nomination for him.


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here in evansville were working hard for an obama win, expect to see those numbers climb!

Hey guys, Yes it is close. If you are in Chicago (or Northwest Indiana), please visit the following site: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/24/123222/686

Information here about GOTV efforts, phone-banking, and early voting in Indiana for Obama volunteers.

Lake county is the second most populous county and the numbers there need to be "big big".

Daily Kos is discredited. Kos sold out to the Obama propaganda machine.
Nothing there except lies and smears 24/7.
They harassed all of the Clinton supporters away by threatening to "out" them.

And then they took all the Hillary Clinton supporters' Bibles, and gathered up their companion animals and et them in a pagan barbeque while dancing around maypoles, and basked in beeswax and honey and the blood of innocents while all through the valley the lamentations of the slaughtered could be heard.

Boo hoo.

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Got banned, did you? Perhaps your problem is that you're a troll.

As for locking up the nomination, I believe that's what Obama's nine-point loss in Pennsylvania just did for him.
Everyone agreed Clinton needed a significant double-digit win to stay even remotely within striking distance. Despite claiming that she did just that, she fell short.
She knows it, Obama knows it, the DNC and the superdelegates know it.
The MSM will pretend otherwise for two more weeks for the sake of ratings, but it really is over.

I was about to post the same thing. I agree.

It is audacious for a candidate with the popular vote
and super delegates to stay in the race.
Give Baby Jesus his crown!

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Obama leads the popular vote by any measure that passes the laugh test. (Not that it really matters, since the outcome is decided by delegates.) And Hillary's superdelegate lead has shrunk from nearly a hundred in early February to just over twenty.

Slumlord is obviously a Republican troll.

Big mouth keep on turnin,
Sad lord keep on burnin,
Trollin, trollin, trollin on the blogs here.
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Hillary doesn't have the popular vote lead. She says "more people who cast ballots voted for her" because if you include caucus voters, she is actually losing.

Please Hoosiers put an end the Clinton psychodrama on May 6th! Obama's been good for Illinois, he'll be good for Indiana . . .

Evansville is an ironic epicenter b/c that was home to the Klan, as reborn in the 1920s (and a Wizard even became governor that decade, to be ousted and imprisoned after a sex scandal!).

If you can get on the phones or donate money. It's not enough to implore others to put her away. Obama's going to need our help.

Even if HRC wins in Indiana, Obama will likely come away from May 6 with more votes and more delegates because of NC. How the heck would that give HRC momentum?

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Nothing will put an end to the psychodrama. It's been over for a month already. She's bound and determined to take it to the convention if the superdelegates don't make it clear to before then that she's lost.

Seeing how Obama always manages to move the chains when he campaigns a state - if we apply the kind of gains he made in PA in two weeks to *this* poll.... he should win Indiana by 10-12 points...

Obama's up by 20 with 3:00 left in the 4th... Hillary just kicked a field goal, and is now berating the referees because she doesn't understand why *she* shouldn't be the winner....

Why can't Hillary ever maintain numbers against an "inferior" candidate? Where's Hillary's flag pin? Why did Hillary vote for Iraq War?

Aw, fuggit.... another $100 to Obama... just because I can...

Man, I wish I could believe that, but I do not. I expect Obama to win Indiana, but not by double digits. Please realize, she started out ahead of him by double digits in IN (Survey USA had her 16 pts ahead of him just a few weeks ago), so he has already moved the polls a great distance. I do not think, however, that it is very likely that he will be able to keep moving them until he is 10+ pts ahead of her. The good news, however, is that I also do not think that she will be able to move things back to favor her. She is riding a great wave of post-victory momentum right now. If she was not able to shift the margin back to her favor today then she is not going to be able to do it at all. Obama will win IN and NC - IN by single digits, NC by a lot more.

I agree with the linked post from Dailykos by Deadalus. We need to roll up our sleeves and get down and dirty with the volunteering in Indiana! From personal experience, I sincerely recommend canvassing. I volunteered in Philadelphia and it was a great experience. The campaign is based on individuals going door-to-door. Every person contacted is a better chance for Obama. So, to Obama-supporters who can feasibly make it to Indiana, even for just a little bit, get to an Obama office and help canvas.
Another piece of advise is for people either uncomfortable with the idea of canvassing (b/c I've met a lot of people who have had a problem with it, and it's always totally fine:)), or who can't make it to Indiana. Call the office numbers listed in that Dailykos post and ask if you can make calls from their direct lists. The particular office I was working out of in Philly outsourced tons of callers from Austin, TX. Making calls from the general site is fine, but it's not as targeted. You don't really know who your calling. If you communicate with a particular field office you will be able to get advice on how to go about talking to potential voters over the phone.

I know this kind of sounds like I'm an insider from the campaign, inserting campaign stuff, but I'm really just a young lady inspired by everything that's going. It's so easy to contribute. I found this out first hand. I wish I could be in Indiana right now, but I've got finals.

I have a friend driving to IN right now. He's going to be at a particular office ( i don't remember where at the moment). So I'm going to be giving out more office information soon.

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I'm not sure how it makes a bit of difference if it's 49-51 or 51-49 in Indiana other than some BS narrative in the media about momentum. The rules say it's DELEGATES that determine the nominee and both a 51-49 Obama win and a 51-49 Clinton win will produce delegate hauls that are almost identical.

Unfortunately, the media narratives do make a big difference, I think.

"It" being the Award for the Crappiest Campaign by a Prohibitive Favorite, Evah.

Edsall's piece is silly. He's trying to push a metanarrative by cherry-picking a handful of editorials that support it. He even tries to argue that the whole world is turning on Obama by citing an opinion piece from the London Times.

And if that wasn't enough to destroy the credibility of his piece, how about the fact that his concluding example is an extended quotation from Karl Rove. Remind me again, at what point was Rove on Obama's ship? And when did he become a member of the media? I bet Obama's praying he doesn't lose Dick Cheney too, or this thing might be over!

I'll admit, some media folks (broadcast talking heads in particular) are eating up Clinton's narrative right now like toddlers in their highchairs. But we all know the attention span of toddlers.

It's hard to believe we've seen the last of the stange bedfellows as this continues to heat up, though no one can provide a cogent reason why it actually NEEDS to heat up...

No more Obliteratti, thanks.

I think hios point is more about how the media all jumps on board a single narrative, facts be damned. The concern here, is that this narrative gets so much play that it becomes self-fulfilling, i.e., after weeks of hearing how Obama can't win over the white working class (due to three or four irrelevant anecdotes that the press conflates into this hyge story, as they are currently doing), the white working class begins to believe it.

My hope, and expectation, is that once the general election campaign starts in earnest, Obama won't be running against a candidate who supports universal health care and an exit strategy from Iraq, and the vast majority of these voters will realize that the Democrat in the race is still by far the better choice.

Clinton Post is not credible.

But can she win North Carolina? She should be able to, what with all of her built in advantages and his myriad of weaknesses (that you so kindly remind us of daily). If she can't close the gap in North Carolina, she's not ready for prime time. She should be able to do that (close the gap) at least ONCE.

Wouldn't you agree? I mean, if she's the superior candidate....

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You seem to really enjoy making a fool of yourself at multiple websites.

It's an interesting pathology.

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Uh, Obama already has the delegate race locked up. Talking about Hillary Clinton's Zombie campaign like it has the capacity to win is doing everyone a disservice.

1. It has been over since early March, or even since super Tuesday.
2. Only permission from the devil, who clearly has a contract on her soul, will get Hillary to stop.

Did anyone hear Chris Mattyhews today re:Rev Wright? "This is his Iraq."

Infantile.

No more Obliteratti.

Pax,
M.

Has Hillary ever won a state where the polls showed a statistical tie at the point she and Obama really started campaigning there?

Haven't all her big victories involved her turning a 20-30 point lead into a 5-10 point lead on election day?

Yes. She's never close the gap in a state where she trailed. You'd think with all of her superior talents, she'd be able to do so. But no, she hasn't.

Just had to do some quick fact checking (using pollster and cnn's election center for results).... I couldn't find an example where she'd "closed the gap" (which makes sense given the early front-runner status), but she did manage to hold an early lead in a handful of states:

Looks like she started about 16 pts down in TN, which she ended up winning by 13 pts.

In RI, the feb polls fluctuated from an 8pt spread to a 15pt point spread, and she ended up winning by 18 pts.

In OK, it looks like she maintained a 20+ pt spread lead to finish with a margin of 24 pts.

Oh, and AR, of course. Not really enough polls done there to judge how it played out it detail, but it was big HRC in March '07 and Dec '07, and voted 70-26 for her in the primary.

And, of course, i just realized that wasn't the question you were asking. Fortunately Publicola Hussein was on the job. (It was fun looking up numbers anyway.)

Which raises the question no one will ask:

WHY CAN'T SHE PUT HIM AWAY???

What exactly do you do on the calls? I want to help but I'm not sure what's involved in making calls. Also, does anybody know how much Hillary is on the air there with ads? Just wondering if we're really going to see a lot of that $10 million spent there or if it was mostly for the general.

Obama needs to get back on the bus. That's when his numbers really went up in Pennsylvania. And he can probably outspend Clinton in Indiana.

A sex scandal? Only if you consider kidnapping and rape leading to the woman's eventual death from infection a "sex scandal". He and his boys were lucky they had connections or they might have gotten the chair.

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"A Clinton win would give her campaign a big boost of momentum'

Yeah, she'd be rolling in to the ever important West Virginia primary like gangbusters. After IN/NC, there are six, count 'em, SIX primaries left. In what universe is the "momentum" concept still relevant?

RPC - I'm so grateful to you for your hard work there in Evansville. Please keep us updated :)

All those saying it's been over for a while are correct.

What I want to know is what the Clintons have over the media that they all so willingly accept whatever their latest meme is about how they can win, how Obama hangs with weirdos (has anyone looked into who the Clintons have been hanging with these last 8 years?), what the rules are of the nominating process, how to do basic math, whatever they throw out there?

Have all our media people suddenly turned into bobblehead dolls on the Clintons mantle?

The rules that everyone agreed to pre-campaign, the rules that the Clintons had a hand in establishing, the rules say the nomination is determined by delegates.

The rules say rogue state parties that allow out of turn votes will not be seated at the convention, the same rules the Clintons had a hand in establishing.

There is NO conceivable way for the Clintons to win the ONLY metric that counts under the rules...the pledged delegates.

It's now up to the superdelegates to decide. The party leadership needs to get on their case and tell them all to grow a spine and declare.

Gads...

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It's dead simple. To the media, the Dem primary train wreck is a gift that keeps giving. If they can keep his going till 2010, they will.

Obama's secret weapon in IN...Okay, in PA we learned that Obama is, shall we say, "bowling challenged." But IN is a basketball state, which I do believe is a bit more to Barack's liking. Anyone for a game of one-on-one (or even HORSE) for the IN delegates...or the Democratic nomination? I am sure Obama would say, "game on." Hey, I think Barack would be willing to take on Hillary's surrogate, Bill, in such a game. By May 6, I think he pushes this race out of three-point range. Hey, but even if he doesn't, he's already won the "series."

And while we are on basketball analogies (we have entered that purgatory of the NBA playoff season), notice how a playoff series is determied by the number of victories, not merely the "total number of points scored IN a series"? There is often a high correlation between the two, but it is not an absolute indicator.

And regardless, Obama has won the majority of states and delegates...and will (has) likely end up with the "total points" (i.e., popular vote) majority as well. I suspect we are heading into the final part of the 4th quarter of a game seven and, while the spread is just about insurmountable, we are not _quite_ ready to declare it "mop up time," but we're close.

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Would you care for a tissue to go with your whine?

Obama is already playing basketball with three kids in a contest.

THANK YOU

Two brief points:

1) I have said it all along and I will say it again: Obama will win IN. Not by a landslide, but he will win it.

2) That said, I am sorry to rain on a bunch of folks' parades but just as I am certain that Obama will win IN, I am equally certain that this will not end the race. Obviously the race will have to end at some point, but May 7 will not be the day.

You do admit though, that her campaign becomes an exercise in absurdity if he beats her in both IN and NC, don't you Greg? I mean, even our braindead media will have to admit that her candidacy no longer has any sane rationale for continuing at that point.

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Her campaign has already become an exercise in absurdity. I don't think she gets out until the superdelegates tell her en masse that it's over, and even then her exit is not assured. I'd like to pretend I'm sure she won't go Lieberman at that point, but, sadly, I'm not.

You do admit though, that her campaign becomes an exercise in absurdity if he beats her in both IN and NC...

Dear Brewman,

Sure, I agree but my admission of that claim makes no difference. Her campaign is already deep into the category of "exercise in absurdity," and yet it goes on. Meanwhile, I guess that I can no longer share your optimistic outlook that there is some event that will force the newsmedia to take this consideration into their reporting. I think that we can expect more of the same for many weeks to come. As I said above, I am fairly confident that nothing about the dynamics of this race will really be different on May 7, just as nothing was really different on Apr 23. Obama will still be winning, Clinton will still be hopelessly behind but the narrative presented in the news will still be about how "she can still win it if..." and the supers will, by and large, keep quiet and let the race continue.

What keeps Hillary is this race is that even though she has baggage, and even though some people strongly dislike her, BO is unelectable. He lacks poise under pressure, he lacks experience, he has anti-American connections that should have made him step down already. If he can't clearly win even among liberals (where "God d- America" is a too-popular refrain), he doesn't have a prayer with the whole country.

Hillary, on the other hand, is more centrist, so that if she can get by the liberals and win the nomination, there are plenty of independents and even republicans who will vote for her as well.

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