Is Obama Behind by 20 Points in Pennsylvania?

A poll out today from the American Research Group caused a bit of a shock for the Obama campaign. It showed him behind Sen. Hillary Clinton by 20 points in Pennsylvania. (And get this - the pollsters at ARG don't think this difference has anything to do with Obama's "bitter" comments.)

But other pollsters are dubious about this one. As Carl Bialik writes in The Wall Street Journal's The Numbers Guy, "there are reasons to question ARG polling numbers."

"In a polling report card of 2008 primary accuracy issued by a rival survey company, ARG ranked in the bottom half of more than three dozen polling firms, among 2008 primaries through late February. It also ranked near the bottom in another ranking of pollster accuracy at fivethirtyeight.com, a Web site that tracks the Electoral College. And, as I wrote last month, the widely tracked polling averages at the political Web site Real Clear Politics don't include ARG numbers, because of concerns about transparency. Like they've been in Pennsylvania, ARG polls also were volatile in previous primaries, notably in Wisconsin, which saw a 16-point swing in just two days."

(Two other recent polls show Clinton with a three-point and a four-point lead. Charles Franklin argues that the ARG poll is an "outlier," a poll that is quite distant from other polling data.)

Dick Bennett, the president of ARG, says while his company struggled in the early states, he says his record had been better in the big states. He attributes Sen. Clinton's apparent gain to Pennsylvania voters' skepticism about the Obama campaign's message. People are telling us that what they're hearing from him ... doesn't speak to the issues they're interested in."

But Clay Richards, the director of the Quinnipiac poll (perhaps the most respected pollster working in Pennsylvania) told Bialik that he doesn't expect his poll -- which will be released tomorrow -- to be much different from the last one that had Clinton leading by six points.

As noted above, neither pollster sees much impact from Obama's comments about "bitter" Pennsylvanians. "My hunch is [the remarks] won't make much of a difference because most voters who might feel insulted by his comments were already Clinton voters or Republicans who weren't going to vote for him, anyway," said Richards.

8:40 PM ET | 04-14-2008 | permalink