Holding firm among women, Clinton keeps her Massachusetts and New Jersey leads

We are only 4 days from Super Tuesday, but the small numbers of polls that is being released is stunning. We have gotten one poll from California and one from New York in days, and nothing for a couple of weeks from key battlegrounds like Missouri and Minnesota. Compare this with the situation just like week in Florida. As a result, it is difficult to measure the extent of Obama's upward movement and to have any idea of what is going to happen in most of Tuesday's states. With that, here are the few surveys that were released since last night:

• Rasmussen polled New Jersey and finds that Clinton is ahead by double-digits, 49% to 37%. The poll was conducted on Wednesday, and it marks a significant improvement for Barack who trailed 45% to 27% two weeks ago.

Edwards is not included in this poll, and his supporters appear to have moved disproportionately to Obama, giving him the highest total he has ever gotten in a New Jersey poll. That could be key come Tuesday because Obama would be able to get a significant number of delegates if he stays close to his rival. Obama's continuing weakness is the female vote, which Clinton is winning by 24%. Obama is actually ahead among males by 5%, a rather massive gender gap. Clinton has been safe for months now because of her advantage among women, and Obama has not been able to break that code just yet.

• Among Republicans, John McCain is ahead 43% to 29% with Huckabee at 7%. Giuliani was not included in the poll and McCain is heading to victory in a winner-take-all state.

As we have pointed out many times before, McCain's strongholds are winner-take-all (Arizona, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey), which is going to shut Romney out of delegates in some massive states. By contrast, Romney's home-state of Massachusetts is one of the only state that allocates delegates proportionally, which is obviously awful news for Romney. We got two polls today to confirm that Romney has a large lead in MA:

• Rasmussen attributes 55% to Romney and 23% to McCain, followed by Huckabee at 8%.
• SUSA shows Romney with 57% to McCain's 34%.


• The Democratic race is much more interesting in MA now that Kennedy (and Kerry) have endorsed Obama. A Rasmussen survey a few days ago gave Clinton a 6% lead, but SUSA is much more reassuring, pitting the race at 57% for Clinton and 33% for Obama. That is still a significant improvement for Barack, who trailed 59% to 22% just a week ago.

If Obama is picking up 13% a week throughout the country, that could put him over the top in places where he started closer to Clinton. But here again, Obama will have to find a way to challenge Clinton among the female vote. He is being crushed 65% to 26% among women in this poll; compare that to males where he is tied at 44%, up from 48% to 25% last week. If Obama's momentum is limited to male voters until Tuesday, he could get close to Clinton but will have a hard time coming out on top.

Finally, Rasmussen also released a poll from Illinois, Obama's home-state. It has Obama leading 60% to 24%. The survey was conducted on Tuesday, so it still has Edwards at 11%. This is great news for Obama, who is winning Illinois by a far larger margin than Clinton is winning New York and that could prevent Clinton from getting a lot of delegates in Illinois and could allow Obama to create some margin between the two nationally.

Update: I obviously deleted the comment from an Obama supporter that was filled with a stunning list of profanities, words to which many of the comments in this thread are responding. I know the Obama-Clinton contest is coming down to the wire and that supporters of both candidates are very tense and eager to defend their choice, but that's no reason to resort to such language or that much hatred.