Thursday, April 17, 2008

Dead Heat in Pennsylvania

The newest Zogby poll show a dead heat in Pennsylvania:

The survey, which was conducted April 15-16, 2008 and came out of the field midway through Wednesday's contentious debate between the two candidates in Philadelphia, shows Clinton at 45% and Obama at 44%, with 12% either wanting someone else or left undecided.


The telephone survey, conducted using live operators working out of Zogby's on-site call center in Upstate New York, included 601 likely Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania. It carries a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points.


Clearly, Obama has been holding his own and has managed to shrink the once sizable gap. This has largely been due to the fact that Pennsylvanians have gotten a better chance to know Obama due to the unprecedented spending on ads, etc. in the Pennsylvania media market ($2.2 million per week on television ads, twice as much as Hillary; it's estimated that by the time all of this is done, the pair will have spent over $40 million in ads for the primary).


Looking at the numbers, as was predicted by most, such as Hillary supporter, Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Obama's comments tended not to hurt him. The debate didn't go so well for Obama, but it's unlikely that will hurt him either. Obama is still very, very likely to be the nominee. Simply a matter of going through the motions and not screwing up too badly. At this point, these primaries, and primary polls, just give folks some fodder to talk about.

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