Frankly, I find this to be a bit misleading.

Barack Obama has won over more than half of Hillary Rodham Clinton's former supporters, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll that finds party loyalty trumping hard feelings less than three weeks after their bruising Democratic presidential contest ended.

Like that is a surprise? No one doubted that Barack Obama would eventually get over half the supporters of Hillary Clinton. After all, a lot of them are like my favorite Democrat -- they think that Obama is under-qualified and something of a phony, but they could no more vote for the Republican nominee than they could disown their own grandmothers. That has never been at issue.

The problem for Obama was always that some 20-25% of Clinton supporters indicated that they could not support him. That loss -- about 10-15% of the Democrat base -- would be critical in November. Being at 50%, then, really doesn't matter. He needs to be at 90-95%.

And he isn't. According to the survey, 23% of Clinton supporters favor John McCain, and 16% are undecided. Good God Almighty! He has lost (at least for now) 4 out of 10 Clinton supporters -- which if the election were held today would quite possibly mean that 15% of Democrats would be voting for John McCain.

And those Clinton supporters are not enthusiastic about him, nor do they find him qualified for the office. Indeed, only 25% of Clinton supporters view Obama as experienced enough to be president, which drops to 5% among that 40% of Clinton voters not supporting him.

What does this mean? Obama isn't the lock some people think he is -- and he might be forced to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate to secure the Democrat base.

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Posted by: Greg at 04:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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