Looking ahead to the Pennsylvania Primary

Thanks for all your comments -- this is an exciting beginning. I'm posting now a conversation our Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving had with Host Liane Hansen this morning. They discussed the upcoming Pennsylvania primary:

In two days, Pennsylvania will be holding its presidential primary, with 158 delegates at stake on the Democratic side. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are spending the weekend in Pennsylvania, fighting not only for those delegates but for the upper hand in the national contest. Joining us to talk about all of this is NPR's Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving....

LIANE: There have been so many pivotal primaries, make or break events in this long campaign -- what does Pennsylvania really mean?

RON: It still means a great deal. It is the last big state. It's the sixth most populous. It's the last blue state - the last state that's going to vote that's really big and been voting for the Democrats, well at least for four presidential elections. So it's Hillary Clinton's last best chance to show she's got the momentum now and that she's going to become the popular favorite again, if that is, in fact, the truth; if that is, in fact, what's going on in this campaign. And she has this chance to show that she's the better vote against McCain in November than Barack Obama.

LIANE: What do the polls in Pennsylvania show...is Hillary Clinton still ahead?

RON: She is. In most all the polls she's running in the middle single digits. Now, of course, she used to have a lead two or three times that large, but she's pretty much been able to freeze the Obama momentum and hold on to about a 4,5,6 thereabout point range. I just saw a poll in the Kansas City paper this morning from McClatchy newspapers and MSNBC that shows her up by about that much, but with a larger bulge among bowlers, gun owners and hunters, running only even though among beer drinkers.

LIANE: Are you getting anything from the national polls?

RON: The national polls are a little bit more all over the map. There's a Newsweek poll out this weekend that shows Obama up nationally as the choice of Democrats with over 55 percent of the vote and a 19 point lead over Clinton. That looks like a bit of an outlier though, most of the other polls are in the 10-point, 12-point range. And then there's one out with the Gallup Tracking poll that tends to go up and down with just a few points lead for Obama, so the average runs in the high single digits for him nationally.

LIANE: Was last week's debate a factor in any of those figures?

RON: Yes, we would have to assume that it has become a factor and that at least in the very latest polls that were taken after that debate, it's already been priced in. It was not Barack Obama's best debate, it was perhaps not Hillary Clinton's best debate. It may not have been the greatest feather in the cap of ABC. But it was watched by more people than any other debate in this entire campaign, so we have to figure that it's having some impact. It would appear that it was the first point where a lot of people began to hear some of these negatives that have been coming out about Obama. And also it would appear that it has frozen his momentum because he had been rising, as I mentioned earlier, the Clinton lead had been much greater in Pennsylvania and Obama looked like he might close the gap and might catch her there.

LIANE: Do you think there'll be a clear victor on Tuesday night?

RON: I think that Clinton will win by several points and then the argument will become whether the margin was great enough to be satisfying from the standpoint of what she needed. Is it the momentum builder, is it the reverser, that she needs. She needs something that really turns this thing around. If, on the other hand, he does catch her and upset her in Pennsylvania, that would appear to be a knockout blow.

-- Thanks for all your comments so far!!!
Davar Iran Ardalan, Senior Producer, Weekend Edition Sunday

12:08 PM ET | 04-20-2008 | permalink