OBAMA vs. CLINTON….It’s late and I don’t have time to think of something really insightful to say about this, so I’ll just throw it out. It’s from the latest Pew poll, and it shows that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are likely to beat John McCain in a general election. What’s odd, though, is something we’ve seen before: Hillary’s strength among self-identified Democrats. Obama, as expected, draws a few more Republicans and independents than Hillary does, but Hillary has far fewer defections among Democrats. In all, 89% of Democrats would vote for her while only 81% would vote for Obama. Daniel Larison points out some additional detail:
Most remarkable of all is that Obama is weaker among Democrats in all age groups than Clinton. He is four points weaker, and McCain five points stronger, among Democratic voters aged 18-49 than in a Clinton v. McCain race. The losses are even greater among Democratic voters 50-64 and 65+.
In fact, in a matchup against McCain, the only subgroup of Democrats that supports Obama more than Hillary is African-Americans — and even in their case only by a tiny margin. I don’t quite know what this means, but it’s worth thinking about.
