( - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
The final results of a SurveyUSA Texas presidential tracking poll were released this morning.
Before the editorializing, the big numbers:
If the Democratic primary were held today, would you vote for Hillary Clinton? Barack Obama? Or some other Democrat?
Clinton - - Obama - - Other
48% 49% 2%
The first interesting tidbit:
6 hours till votes are counted in the Texas Democratic Primary, contest is a Jump Ball, with Obama's momentum now slowed, and possibly stalled...
This comment seems to be based on tightening margins throughout the poll's tracking, but for those of us on the ground in Texas, there is no indication that Obama's momentum has slowed. While record early vote turnout cannot itself measure support for one candidate, it is certainly a sign that there is tremendous interest and backing for both candidates.
Another interesting note:
For Obama to carry the state's popular vote (convention delegates are not awarded as a straight function of the popular vote), Obama needs to run at least 3 points stronger than Clinton among those who vote at the precinct tomorrow.
Given Senator Obama's history with caucuses, this is certainly an achievable margin. However, the importance of Texas to the Clinton campaign has drawn a surge of Hillary volunteers both from Texas, and from around the nation. At the end of the day, however, numbers may not be able to make up for the superior organization that Senator Obama's campaign has displayed in every caucus contest.
Other takeaways from the poll include:
- The survey breaks up the results into four age groups, and Senator Clinton leads in every one, except those between the ages of 18 and 34. However, her only significant lead is with voters over the age of 65, where she has 22 percentage point lead.
- Among those who responded with a party affiliation, Senator Obama leads among those who identify Republican 60% to 36%.
- Senator Obama also has a significant lead among those that identify themselves as independents: 55% to 41%.
- Among those that identified the economy as the top issue in the election, the candidates split the votes: 49%-49%
- Where Iraq and Terrorism were identified as the top issue in the election, voters overwhelmingly preferred Senator Obama.
Iraq - - Terrorism
Obama 57% 62%
Clinton 42% 30%
These voters were interviewed Saturday and Sunday, after Senator Clinton had put her new national security ad into play. However, the surveys may be too close to judge the ad's impact, if it has any.
There's more and more to take away from the poll, and I can leave a lot of that to you as you go through the numbers. In case you missed the link above, the full break down can be found here.
UPDATE
I went back to find the previous two SUSA polls, and have noted some interesting trends below the fold.
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