Seismic Shakes From California as Obama Closes in on Clinton

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Latest Poll Has Obama Within 3 Points in State

By Frank D. Russo

You can see it in the late breaking polls, feel it out on the street, and in conversations with neighbors, relatives, and political insiders, and even the last minute endorsement of elected officials and the state’s newspapers. There’s some serious shaking going on in California and once firm predictions that Hillary Clinton will win the primary in this state have become a lot more tentative.

Polls only get you so far with predicting state primaries, as we have learned in recent days. Elections are determined by those who come out to vote and as this race tightens in the golden state, field operations, ground level enthusiasm, and excitement matter. Polls can’t explain what causes volunteers to stand in the drizzle in the early morning traffic rush, such as those pictured above just a few minutes ago in Oakland. They sure did get quite a few honks as cars streamed by.

The well respected California based polls, the Field Poll and Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll, have shown Clinton to be ahead by 12% and 15%, but tracked opinions of what they considered to be likely voters for the week ending January 20 and are now 11 days out of date.

Even here, there were signs of movement as Clinton’s advantage in the Field Poll dropped from 30 points in August to 25 in October, 18% in December, and 12% where they left off. The same is true in the PPIC’s survey which showed a 24 point Clinton lead in December which had shrunk to 15 points when they stopped polling.

The latest poll from Rasmussen released yesterday showed Clinton with a very narrow three-percentage point lead over Obama, 43% to 40%. The survey was conducted two days ago, Tuesday, January 29, 2008, in the hours immediately following Florida's Presidential Primary and before John Edwards dropped out of the race. It was of 807 likely Democratic primary voters and Obama is actually within the 4% margin of error of the poll.

And there is more evidence from tracking polls that the race may be even tighter as San Francisco Chronicle political reporters Matier and Ross wrote yesterday: Two surveys of 400 likely Democratic voters each—Sunday and Monday—by the No on 94-97 proposition campaign had Obama leading Clinton 35% to 32%. As they report, however, these numbers must be interpreted with caution: “A prominent political consultant following the numbers emphasizes that while a single night's tracking isn't considered statistically reliable, it does show movement and direction.”