Hillary Drops Back

It is not clear to what extent Wednesday night's debate in Philadelphia affected the overall results. Clinton, aided by debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC, kept Obama mostly on the defensive over his associations with Pastor Jeremiah Wright and Chicago professor William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground who served on a community board with Obama and once hosted a campaign event for the candidate at his home. Obama was also questioned about his decision not to wear a flag lapel pin. Stacy DiAngelo of Princeton Survey Research Associates, which did the April 16-17 polling, says that of the registered voters who were surveyed 517 were interviewed after the debate and 692 before. She added that the views of those surveyed remained largely constant.

But Obama appears to have the momentum on nearly every front, both among Democrats and general voters nationwide. Clinton's prospects for snatching the nomination from the Democratic front runner at this point depend mainly on her ability to persuade uncommitted "superdelegates"—those who are not bound by particular primary results—that she is more likely to defeat John McCain. But by a large margin (55 percent to 33 percent) Democratic voters now say Obama—not Clinton—is the candidate they believe is more likely to defeat McCain in November. In the March poll Obama's advantage was much smaller (44 percent to 38 percent).

The poll pointed up a trouble sign for McCain as well, which is that no one's forgotten how old he is. While voters have mixed opinions about whether Obama's race will do more to help or hurt his chances of being elected president (20 percent vs. 22 percent, respectively), and Clinton's gender is only somewhat more likely to be seen as a hindrance than a help (27 percent vs. 20 percent), McCain's age may be the biggest vulnerability of all in the eyes of the voters. Nearly four in 10 (36 percent) think the Arizona senator's age—at 71, he would be the oldest president ever to assume office for the first time—will hurt his chances of winning.

Finally, the door is still open for Al Gore, the survey showed. If the battle for the Democratic nomination extends into the party's convention in August, about half (49 percent) of Democratic voters think the party should consider nominating the former vice president as a way to break the deadlock.

Methodology Statement (4/18/08)
This poll was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 16-17, 2008. Telephone interviews were conducted with 1,209 registered voters. Registered voters were screened from a random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone sample of 1,356 national adults. Registration status is self-reported. Eighty-three percent of adults in the sample reported being registered. Thirty-nine percent of registered voters are Republicans or lean Republican and 53% of registered voters are Democrats or lean Democratic. Results are weighted so that the sample demographics match Census Current Population Survey parameters for gender, age, education, race, region, and population density. The overall margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for results based on 1,209 registered voters. Results based on smaller subgroups are subject to larger margins of sampling error.

© 2008