Poll: Obama struggling to win over Clinton voters

By ALAN FRAM and TREVOR TOMPSON – 8 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama's support from backers of Hillary Rodham Clinton is stuck smack where it was in June, a poll showed Tuesday, a stunning lack of progress that is weakening him with fellow Democrats in the close presidential race.

An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll shows that among adults who backed his rival during their bitter primary campaign, 58 percent now support Obama. That is the same percentage who said so in June, when Clinton ended her bid and urged her backers to line up behind the Democratic senator from Illinois.

The poll shows that while Obama has gained ground among Clinton's supporters — 69 percent view him favorably now, up 9 percentage points from June — this has yet to translate into more of their support.

In part, this is because their positive views of Republican presidential nominee John McCain have also improved during this period. The share of Clinton supporters saying they'll vote for McCain edged up from 21 percent to 28 percent, with the number of undecided staying constant, according to the survey, conducted by Knowledge Networks.

Clinton backers' reluctance to support Obama helps explain why he is having a tougher time solidifying partisan supporters than McCain. Overall, 74 percent of Democrats say they will vote for Obama, compared with 87 percent of Republicans behind the Arizona senator. About nine in 10 Clinton supporters are Democrats.

The problem that supporters of Clinton, the New York senator, have with Obama seems to flow from their measure of him as a candidate, not from issues. From establishing a timeline for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq to abortion to canceling tax cuts on the rich, their views of the importance of issues are virtually identical to Democrats in general.

Yet they find Obama less likable, honest, experienced and inspiring than Democrats overall do, and have a better view of McCain. And while majorities of Clinton supporters say Obama shares their values and understands ordinary Americans, they're less likely to say so than Democrats overall.

"It's just a gut feeling, my gut tells me he's not it," Leslye Burgess, 53, a federal Treasury Department manager and Clinton supporter from Fairfax, Va., said of Obama.

The GOP's selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate has had no net impact on Clinton loyalists — a group Republicans were hoping to lure by picking the Alaska governor. Twenty-one percent in the poll said Palin on the ticket makes them likelier to back McCain, 21 percent said it makes them less likely, and 58 percent said it had no impact.

The choice of Joe Biden as Democratic vice presidential candidate makes them a bit likelier to vote for Obama, but seven in 10 said it didn't matter.

Whites saying Clinton should have been the nominee were twice as likely as whites preferring Obama to choose at least one negative adjective to describe blacks, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll conducted three weeks ago aimed at testing racial attitudes. Given a list of possible descriptions of blacks, four in 10 Clinton backers chose at least one derogatory one, compared to one in five of Obama's.

Other September polls have shown Obama making progress in recent weeks with one-time Clinton backers and doing better with them than in the AP-Yahoo News survey. One by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center had Obama with 78 percent of their support and McCain with 18 percent; another by ABC News and The Washington Post showed Obama ahead 72 percent to 23 percent.

Those figures measured Clinton supporters who are registered voters — who in the AP-Yahoo News poll leaned toward Obama over McCain 61 percent to 26 percent. The discrepancies in the polls might come from how they were conducted.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Clinton supporters are turning to Obama "in huge numbers" and noted that the AP-Yahoo News data differed from other polls. He said strong feelings by Clinton supporters were understandable considering the length and intensity of the Democratic primaries and said of Clinton, "She's done everything we've asked her to do."

Asked about the AP-Yahoo News poll Tuesday on MSNBC, Clinton said she was working to persuade more of her supporters to back Obama, saying, "I'm working hard to close that gap."

The AP-Yahoo News poll has surveyed the same nationally representative group of about 2,000 adults seven times since November, in an effort to understand how individuals are reacting to the presidential race. Nine in 10 Clinton supporters who said in June they were backing Obama were still with him in September, while three-quarters of those with McCain stayed with him.

As during her primary battle against Obama, Clinton supporters are likelier to be female, white and less educated than those who did not back her.

They trust Obama more than McCain on important issues, though not by as much as Democrats overall do. They prefer Obama over McCain on the economy by 30 percentage points, compared with Obama's 50-point edge among all Democrats. They like Obama on Iraq by 17 points, while all Democrats give Obama a 40-point margin.

The starkest contrast comes from comparing Clinton backers still refusing to support Obama with other Democrats.

Just three in 10 Clinton supporters still not backing Obama view him favorably, compared with eight in 10 of all Democrats. While most Democrats and former Clinton supporters strongly prefer Obama over McCain to handle key issues, those Clinton voters still opposing Obama opt for McCain: On the economy by 32 points, and on Iraq by 47 points.

The AP-Yahoo News poll of 1,740 adults was conducted Sept. 5-15 and has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points. It included interviews with 502 people who in AP-Yahoo News polls in January and April identified themselves as supporting Clinton in one or both of those months, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4.4 points.

The survey was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews.

In contrast, the Pew and ABC-Post polls relied on people saying in September whether they supported Clinton earlier this year. Those polls were conducted by telephone; some studies have shown people can be less reluctant to disclose embarrassing behavior — like not supporting their party's presidential nominee — in an online survey than to a live telephone interviewer.

On the other hand, people in the AP-Yahoo News poll who backed Clinton in earlier waves of the survey might not want to appear inconsistent by suddenly backing a candidate — Obama — they opposed earlier.

AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

Do What You Pledged To Do

"If Barack is the nominee, he is the nominee," Diana Carpenter-Madoshi, 62, a retired nurse from Rocklin, California, and a Clinton delegate, said in a follow-up interview. "I'm still pledged to Hillary because I was elected by my district to be her pledged delegate and I'm honoring the voters who voted for her."

When Your Name Is Called...

vote Hillary. There are millions behind you.

Biden and Trent Lott have something in common...

Biden to Strom Thurmond on his 90th birthday: "You have been an inspiration to me in so many ways."

Cover (Up) Story: Red Herring Leaked On Purpose

Politico

Hillary gets stiffed

By MIKE ALLEN 8/22/08 12:38 PM EST Updated: 8/22/08 12:38 PM EST

There’s one Democrat who would seem to have little or no chance of being picked by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to be his running mate – his former opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

But it’s not for the reason you think.

Obama has often said, most recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on July 27, that Clinton “would be on anybody’s short list.” But apparently not his.

“She was never vetted,” a Democratic official reported. “She was not asked for a single piece of paper. She and Senator Obama have never had a single conversation about it. How would he know if she’d take it?” The official also said Clinton never met with Obama’s vetting team of Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy. And the official said she was never asked for medical records or for any financial 2008 information about her or former President Bill Clinton. The last information the couple has disclosed about taxes and financial holdings was for 2007.

The Clintons also were not asked about donors to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.

“This would be the biggest leap of faith ever,” the official said. “She’s waiting for the text message like everyone else.” An Obama aide said "absolutely exhaustive research was done on her over the course of the 16 month primary. She was researched more closely than any candidate in history."

Veepstakes / Buy-Off

"New York Daily News": Hillary Clinton for Barack Obama’s VP
August 22, 2008 12:34 PM ET Bonnie Erbe
The Daily News editorial board adventurously puts forward Sen. Hillary Clinton's name as Sen. Barack Obama's best vice presidential running mate in an editorial today.
The News admits the choice is highly unlikely, but the paper concurs with many Clinton supporters who feel that she is Obama's best chance to win the White House in November. Will Obama listen? It would truly make news if he did.

Inside Baseball

We have friends:

"The majority of our contacts/voters are low propensity voters. Your propensity to vote is determined by looking at the last 4 statewide elections. (2 most recent statewide General Elections and 2 most recent statewide Primary Elections). Depending on which ones you voted in you would be given a score of [(1/4)-voted in 1 of the 4 above-mentioned elections----(4/4)-voted in all 4 of the above-mentioned elections]. The 4/4 dont need our encouragement to go out and vote and are probably old and arent going to be swayed by our pitch anyway so we dont focus on them. The 3/4 will get a little attention as they may be people who voted because of our previous encouragement/harassment. The 1/4 and 2/4 are where we focus 80-90% of our efforts. They tend to be young and we've hoped that we can increase our vote totals among this group by about 60+%. But that's not happening. The thing is, these people also tend to be more moderate (and you would think more inclined to vote dem this year given the current political environment), but it's just not registering. They become un-connected to our messenger. It seems the more they learn about him, the more same/stagnant/typical politician he becomes. It's gonna be a long fall.