Saturday polls: The Wright question

Saturdays rarely see a lot of polling released, and today was no exception. Particularly interesting, however, is the question of the impact the week-long focus on Wright had on Obama's poll numbers. And the two tracking polls tell us slightly opposing stories:

• Gallup shows that Obama has been making up the ground he lost over the past week, suggesting that the race speech could have had the desired effect. Obama is leading Clinton 48% to 45% nationally, the first time he has retaken the lead in 5 days. Obama has been improving his standing over the past 3 days -- and that followed 5 days of Clinton improving her position every day. These trendlines look to be clearly correlated to the evolution of Wright.

• Meanwhile, the Rasmussen daily tracking shows Clinton up 46% to 44% -- and gaining ground for each of the past 4 days. Obama led Clinton by 8% before Wright.

The two institutes show Democrats starting to make up some of the lost ground to McCain. For Gallup, McCain leads both Democrats by 2%, while Rasmussen shows McCain leading Clinton 49% to 43% (which is, believe it or not, a trendline in Clinton's favor) and up 49% to 41% on Obama. A new Fox News poll also has some interesting data:

• It shows Clinton leading McCain 46% to 43% but McCain edging out Obama 44% to 43%.

It's safer to say that Clinton has recovered from her late February collapse than that Obama is particularly hurting. Fox also asked questions relating to Wright and found that 72% were familiar with comments made by the Reverend, and only 24% thought that Obama shared the opinions of his pastor (versus 57%).

Finally, Rasmussen released two general election polls today from Southern states, and confirmed Republican dominance in that region:

• In Georgia, McCain leads Obama 53% to 40% and Clinton 54% to 34%.
• In Arkansas, McCain leads Clinton 50% to 43% and Obama 59% to 30%.

The numbers out of Arkansas are actually a bit surprising as this is the first poll we have seen that has Clinton trailing in her former home state. A Rasmussen poll taken over the summer, the SUSA poll from late February and a University of Arkansas poll last week showed Clinton ahead against Republicans (for the first) and McCain (for the two latter). The Univ of Arkansas survey had her leading 51% to 36%. Rasmussen's numbers merely confirm that Obama will have little chance in this state, for if even Clinton isn't clearly ahead it's unlikely Arkansas is ready to go back to his Democratic roots this year.