Totality Of Polls Suggest that Indiana And North Carolina Could Be A Wash
So what will happen tomorrow in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries?
If you look at the totality of all the polls thus far, they suggest that in terms of both the pledged del count and popular vote, an Obama win in North Carolina will be nearly canceled out by a corresponding Hillary victory in Indiana -- meaning the whole night could end up being more or less a wash.
This isn't to say that Obama won't come out on top. If the current average of polls holds up, he'll likely net gains in both the pledged del and popular vote count, thanks to North Carolina's greater overall population. But if you project out the size of the victories based on current polls, it looks as if his net gains in both categories could be negligible.
The polls have shown Hillary's overall lead in Indiana to be in the mid-single digits. But some polls suggest that late deciders will break her way, and precedent suggests the same, given that this happened in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. So let's assume a 55%-45% win for Hillary in Indiana.
Meanwhile, Obama leads in North Carolina by almost ten, so let's assume Obama will win that state by a similar margin of 10 points.
If that happens, our calculations suggest that Obama will walk away with a slight edge for the night of roughly 95 pledged delegates to Hillary's 92. That's because Indiana has 72 delegates, which would roughly break down to 40 for Hillary and 32 for Obama. And North Carolina has 115 delegates, which would roughly break down to 63 for Obama and 52 for Hillary.
What about the popular vote? Going by Chuck Todd's projections for the total popular votes in these two states, Obama -- assuming a roughly 10-point margin in both states -- would gain a net popular vote victory for the night of about 60,000 votes.
In short, the night could end with little change in the delegate or popular vote margins between the two Dems. This would allow Hillary to argue that the contest should continue, and enable her to keep sowing doubts with the super-dels by asking why he can't "close the deal."
But this would also bring Obama that much closer to the nomination by making it that much harder for Hillary to ever reach 2,025 delegates -- while bringing himself closer to that magic number.
The latest polls, along with a poll-of-polls bottom line, after the jump.
Indiana
Pollster.com Average: Clinton 49.5%, Obama 43.3%
SurveyUSA: Clinton 54%, Obama 42%
ARG: Clinton 53%, Obama 45%
Suffolk: Clinton 49%, Obama 43%
Zogby: Obama 44%, Clinton 42%
InsiderAdvantage: Clinton 47%, Obama 40%
North Carolina
Pollster.com Average: Obama 50.1%, Clinton 41.5%
InsiderAdvantage: Obama 48%, Clinton 45%
PPP (D): Obama 53%, Clinton 43%
ARG: Obama 50%, Clinton 42%
Zogby: Obama 48%, Clinton 40%
Rasmussen: Obama 49%, Clinton 40%
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