Figures never lie... but liars figure.

And if poker hands were won by the highest totals of the cards, two pair with 10's and 6's would beat three 9's. Try that argument at your next poker game.

Six months of having the voters choose a nominee? Meh. It makes much more sense to pick one based on inconclusive polling.

/Slams head on computer.

The Obama campaign's 50-state voter registration drive, and the Obama Fellows initiative will bring in multitudes not factored in these polls.

And tell Josh to bring back the preview and edit functions. Damn.

Yawn, but I thought all evidence, analysis, etc., proved that the clintons would beat mccain in a general election match-up. I guess they misspoke.

One possible important feature of these matchups is the extent to which Clinton has "poisoned the wells" in those states where she beat Obama by significant margins. As many have observed, her campaign attacks (direct or subliminal) against Obama were quite Republican in their rhetorical tone and sometimes in substance. In other words, today's Obama/McCain matchups in states Hillary won against Obama will almost inevitably reflect the damage she inflicted on him. Is this plausible? I'm asking.

It ends August 25, 2008 and anything can happen.

Amazing after all the Obama hacks that drank his kool aid said it was over after Iowa.

What a fighter Clinton is.

Thing is, the devils in the details on all of these. It's meaningless to lump certain states together. For example, the numbers might show Obama down by 35 in Utah and up by six in Colorado, so on average, he's behind McCain. But in practice, that's a win for Obama because it's 9 electoral votes for Colorado and 5 for Utah.

On the Clinton side, she's getting credit for big leads in New York and California, high population states that are going to skew heavily in her favor. But in a general election, what difference does it make? Both Obama and Clinton win those states' electoral votes, and there's no bonus for winning them by larger margins.

So, unless we know the breakdown of states and percentages in each state, this is all just meaningless fun with numbers.

The great Chuck Todd said yesterday that what we're seeing with these polls is a similar phenomenon that occurred with Edwards in '04, and Bradley and McCain in '00. Once the nomination is essentially settled, but the challenger has yet to drop out, the front runner stops campaigning against the second-place finisher, which translates into a short-term bounce for that person. It may be hard for Clinton trolls to grasp, but her polls are as inflated right now as her justifications for staying in the race.

Meaningless.

Why would polls taken between May 12-25 be important for an election in November. Shall I pull out some polls from 5 1/2 months ago (like the ones showing Hillary up nationally by 20 points), and start treating them like fundamental truths? Cuz that's what you're doing here, and its just dumb.

These numbers come many months before the general election, ...while the Dems rip into each other..."

Uh, No.

Corrected sentence:

"Theses numbers come...while Hillary Clinton attacks her opponent on a daily basis, stoking white resentment agains the first likely African-American presidential nominee, and further persuading her supporters that his nomination is somehow illegitimate, with said dishonest and unfair attacks being constantly amplified via both the mainstream media and influential political websites such as Talking Points Memo."

There. Fixed it for ya.

Republican trolls (gotalife, HillaryClinton08, Stupor Mario, Registered User, et al) there is no place for you here.

You're divisive and Democrat-hating comments as supposed Hillary supporters expose you for who you are.

Hillary would be ashamed to have you as supporters. Good thing you are not. Now kindly check in to see what your talking points are at John McCain's website and get off our progressive community blog. No amount of nasty posts will break us this fall.

There will e unity. Our unity around our platform for ending the war, fiscal responsibility, and supporting the troops will win us this election!

You are going to lose!!!! Republicans will lose a whole generation, if not two, becuase of the shit you pulled the last eight years. Be prepared to reap what you have sown.

Lets see, McCain starts out with w's base, disenfranchised voters in Florida and Michigan, the blue collar votes and who knows what the Clinton supporters will do.

Yup, Obama will lose.

You Obama people just crack me up! I suppose I was that naive in my first few elections, too. How long have you guys been big D Democrats, anyway? Who do you think the vast majority of Democrats ARE? Where do you think the base of the Democratic party reside? I will be watching with interest as reality (with a capital R) starts to settle on Sen. Obama's campaign.

What is wrong with you people?

You're dismissing this polling merely because you don't like its conclusions. But you're more than happy to exchange solid data for pro-Obama speculation.

Why not seriously contemplate the strong possibility that it will be harder for Obama to put together 271 votes than it would be for Clinton? If, as I suspect, Obama is the Democratic nominee, these are issues that he is going to have to deal with. Why pretend that structural weaknesses that this and other polls have exposed are inventions?

I certainly opt for inspiration vs. intimidation...and I dislike this senseless battle that Hillary and Bill have brought on. This weekend we'll know after the DLC meets where the leaders stand. I want to focus on November and have inspiration lead us to the White House.

I just polled myself today. Obama wins over McCain 100% to 0%. McCain and Clinton tie, 0% to 0%.

The sample size is small, but there's a 0% margin of error.

Seems pretty clear that Clinton's supporters are telling the pollsters they're going to go McCain. Will they actually do this? Possible. I guess people do cut of their noses to spite their faces. But I'd be more interested in polls further down the line, after there's been some time for calmer reflection.

The good news is, I guess, that Obama's supporters actually do have a sense of reponsiblility about the good of the nation.

And, of course, these numbers come at the end of Hillary's long and torturous kitchen sink campaign that has included all sorts of nasties that we never expected were even in her kitchen sink. Meanwhile, Obama has essentially run a Jackie Robinson campaign. Hillary gets indignant because Obama points out how dishonest she is, but of course the pillow-puff attacks on Clinton from Obama are less than the tip of the tip of the iceberg she will face from McCain and Repub 527s in the actual campaign. Here's a good example. Obama touched on Hillary's health care mandates for her unicorn (sorry I meant universal) health care proposal. She got all indignant and shouted him down. Guess what? In the general election, her plan will be C-R-U-C-I-F-I-E-D on precisely those grounds. The media will buy it and she will lose on that issue. How do we know? Because we saw her get torched on exactly those kind of "big-government mandate" points when she last tried to provide us with unicorn (sorry, I meant universal) health care in 1992. The republicans will ruin her with her own signature issue and she'll complain, but in the general she won't be going against Jackie Robinson, she'll be going against someone who actually has to fight back to win. And she'll lose. At this point I'm almost hoping she steals the nomination so we can see it.

I fail to see how this is particularly interesting. McCain is the Republican nominee. The Democrats don't have a nominee. Instead, we have a deeply divided party. Of COURSE it looks like McCain is doing well.

Gotalife and his troll buddies have convinced me to write a script that randomly posts angry non-sequitors to right-wing blogs.

Thinly-veiled republican smear aside, the good news is that it's looking more and more like Obama will win the GE. Until that happens the hissy fits are sorta funny. Sad, but also sorta funny.

Does anybody else have a crush on TenaX? It's not is spite of her potty-mouth, but BECAUSE of it.

And will someone please tell RaeK to stop yelling? the incessant bleating is hurting my ears.

Good times...

If polls were meaningless no one would pay for them.
But they do with good reason.

Snapshot:
Clinton is ahead in popular vote.
Clinton is ahead in GE polling data.
Florida and Michigan have not been resolved.
Many SDs have not pledged, others can switch.
Several months until the convention.
Neither candidate has clinched the nomination.
Obama counting his chickens before they've hatched.

Clinton remains the best choice for president.

All this is so convincing that I'm going to write the Ohio Board of Elections today and ask that my vote for Obama really be counted for Hillary.

Oh wait, I can't do that? My vote is already cast?

Damn, I was hoping we could keep this second guessing up all summer.

White people? We don't need no stinkin' white people!

Kool-aid drinking cult. Your Dear Leader's going to lose the whole thing, and give us 4 more years of Bush.

Freakin' American Idol chumps.

Reality Check:

The General Election is five months away. If you want to get some idea of how well Hillary's poll numbers hold up, check where she was in the polls, compared to Senator Obama, five months ago.

Did someone blow a troll call?

Its only going to get worse for Mr Hope. A lot worse.

As Chuck Todd pointed out, no one is attacking Clinton now -- and no one has for at least three weeks. That's going to make a difference. Plus, I can only imagine the margin of error for the subset of individual states.

Look at SUSA. Obama does very well. And as I've said many times, none of these polls account for the destruction of the party were the SDs to overturn things now.

time for troll haiku!

Hillary's campaign:
now fueled by the bitter tears
of her supporters

bogus poll-twisting
for the 18 millionth time.
Is it June 3rd yet?

gotalife, fogu -
sound of pissing in the wind.
it's not pretty.

Polls are meaningless, let's debate the issues.

Oh wait, Hillary and Obama are essentially the same on the issues.

Vote Democrat in 2008!

You're criticizing the commenters because they're dismissing the polls, and cherrypicking others to make arguments.

This has been the modus operandi for the Clinton campaign since last December. Yes?

Why is it that there are almost no thoughtful, civil, intellectually sophisticated Hillary supporters here? What does it say about them that their avatars are anti-Obama rather than pro-Hillary?

Geez! Not this crap again. Again?!?!?! Geez.

Yes, she's sort-of right - as of NOW. Today, with today's polls.

That's the part no one adds and that's essential. If Obama was WAY behind in all these polls written about, and she was WAY up there, well, then it'd be a more serious situation. But remember when the polls said she was 7 points behind Obama in North Carolina and he blew her away with 15? Rememember when they said she'd beat him handily in Indiana but they essentially tied? In fact, those two states - and her results - are what did her in with the superdelegates and the media and the rest of us.

Let's keep perspective here, folks. With 5-6 months to go and her out out the way, Obama's looking GOOD indeed as our GE candidate against McCain and is clearly our best able candidate for President.

Do not be surprised if you see Obama campaigning (and spending high) in New York and Mass late in the season. As of now, he is barely competitive in both the states. The suburbs of New York City (heavy Italian and Jewish population) will be at best even for him. At best. Up state NY is heavily heavily republican. I am willing to bet $100 he will not win New York. And he is loosing NJ to McCain.
The irrational hatred of all things Clinton destroyed Gingrich and the conservative movement in the 90s. Now similar hatred will destroy our party and/or the liberals.
Not a chance that another moderate candidate will even pay a lip service to the liberals in years to come. And we liberals would deservce exactly that.

These polls are nonsensical. They need to break it down by state. Of course, Clinton will do better in her states, if you merge numbers from Tennessee and Kentucky and West Virginia (where she will certainly do at least 5+ points better than Obama) with those from New York and California.

And they'll both likely get killed in places like Utah and Kansas, but what are the individual numbers for Colorado? Virginia? She does just as well in the 20 states he won? Really? Or does she do slightly better in some (Nebraska, Mississippi, Louisiana) and worse in others (Colorado, Wisconsin, Oregon)?

Just mashed together, you can't really glean anything of value from this beyond what we already know: Obama does fine everywhere but the South and generally does better than Clinton out west.

#1 It is pointless to try and reason with people who have already proven themselves to be completely unreasonable. There is nothing - no facts, polls, or arguments - that anyone can offer to convince the Obama cult not to drink the Kool Aid.

#2 What you fail to understand is that it's not about winning in November. It's about proving that Obama and his supporters are better than everyone else. The point of voting for Obama is to prove you are not a racist. The point is not winning in November.

#3 When Obama loses it will be all Hillary's fault. So it makes absolutely no sense to nominate the person who is going to make Obama lose the election. It doesn't matter if she could win because she is so determined to make Obama lose. And for that, she must be hated and ostracized forever.

Someday, I'm guessing in 2010, it will begin to sink in for these Hillary toesuckers that President Obama really did win the Democratic nomination.

Until then, I expect to see the same kind of air-headed denial and rooting for failure for Democrats like what the Hillary supporters demonstrate in this thread.

Most Obama's supporters ARE telling pollsters that they'd vote for Clinton in the general (this tops 80%). I think there is a bit of uncertainty here for two reasons: most think Obama will get the nomination; the poll doesn't specify the circumstances by which Clinton won the nomination. Upshot: if Clinton got the nod by getting 80% of the remaining uncommitted SDs, or by flipping pledged delegates, or something along these lines, many of Obama's supporters, let's face it, would conclude that the nomination had been stolen from him and the "sore loser" phenomenon would reverse itself.

If we're just talking about what polls show about electability now, though, Clinton is getting a bump from this "party unity" effect and Obama is getting docked. If you don't believe me, check out the crosstabs. This should be getting much more attention.

I may have missed the BREAKING NEWS on MSNBC ... has someone now proposed leaving MI and FL out of the GENERAL election???

To the above lament about intelligent, civil discussion by Clinton supporters: There's not many rational Clinton supporters left who comment on this site. Obama cheerleaders in TPM's forums show a lot of contempt for Hillary supporters.

For the record, I supported HRC, have never voted republican, will be switching to the mountain party (a weak but bona-fide 3rd party in WV) after this election, do not support the war, etc., but have been derogatorily called OLD, a RACIST, A BITTER WOMAN (this one I'll cop to), A CRACKER, and a SECRET REPUBLICAN. See above for the too old to get pregnant comment.

Obama supporters have short memories or an amazing amount of idealism and a frightening level distaste of Clinton, who is often blamed for all of her husband's worst qualities. Policy-wise she and Obama are similiar, and her campaign has not been particularly brutal IMO, I have seen a number of worse ones - particularly the savaging of John Kerry by the Repubs. in 04.

I am quite unconvinced of Obama's superior qualities; I like him, but I'm not much of an idealist and I'm not sure he can lead this country out of the cynicism of politics. Did anyone see the HBO mini-series on Adams? Boy, did they play dirty politics. Glad we're planning on curing that tendency this time around.

However, I'll certainly vote for Obama in Nov. I'm sure if elected he'll be a fine president.

If Obama supporters are saying in polls that they'd vote for Clinton if the situation were reversed, why the slamming of Clinton supporters here?