Thursday polls: First numbers from Puerto Rico!

Two important primaries polls were released this morning -- including the very first ever from the potentially decisive contest in Puerto Rico. First, however, comes Pennsylvania and its April 22nd primary. It's become increasingly difficult to figure out where things stand in the Keystone state, with SUSA and Insider Advantage (and, to a lesser degree, PPP) showing Clinton on the rebound while other pollsters still find her lead declining:

• Today, TIME magazine released its own poll, finding Clinton ahead 44% to 38%, 49% to 41% once leaners are included.
• The poll's internals are expected: Clinton has a big lead among white voters (51%-30%) and particularly among white women; Obama is ahead among blacks 80% to 8% -- and he still has room to grow here, considering he was routinely reaching 90% of the African-American vote in late February and early March. Also, 26% of Clinton voters say they would be "more likely" to vote for McCain is Obama is the nominee.

Both campaigns are now battling in a ferocious game of expectations; the Clinton campaign claims it is a miracle she is even ahead given how massively she is being outspent, an argument they already used in the run-up to Ohio and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Obama's camp laughs that off and explains that a single-digit loss would be a great victory. Unfortunately for Hillary, Obama is right to say that this is too late in the game for "just a victory" to help Clinton much. She needs to both get a meaningful pledged delegate lead out of the state and trounce Obama by enough of a margin to instill doubts about his candidacy. The good news for the Clinton campaign is that polls suggest she has room to grow back to the kind of lead she needs (just like in Ohio) -- and the seemingly constant stream of bad Pennsylvania polls has been interrupted.

Meanwhile, the first poll from Puerto Rico was released today! The primary is being held on June 1st and will award a large number of delegates that could be decisive if Clinton is hoping to cut Obama's lead. More importantly, Puerto Rico will almost close voting season (there will be two small votes on June 3rd) and the result could very well determine which campaign heads into the "off-season" with the most momentum:

• This new poll shows Hillary ahead 50% to 37% against Obama. The conventional wisdom is that this is Clinton's contest to lose and this margin might even look a bit underwhelming.

Puerto Rico could become an organization battle -- if the race goes that late. Bill Clinton already visited Puerto Rico this past month, and the state's establishment is mostly backing Clinton. In fact, Obama's main support in the state was Governor Acevedo Villa who was indicted last month of 19 counts of campaign finance violations, limiting the influence he could have had on the vote.

And you can bet the exhausted campaign and the media would love to spend a few weeks in Puerto covering the primary.

Update, in response to a comment by Jason: The "seemingly constant stream of bad PA polls" being interrupted has nothing to do with weekend polling versus weekday polling. Practically every poll over more than a week showed Obama rising and a number of institutes no longer see such a trend this week: SUSA, Insider Advantage and PPP all had Obama catching up last week and show the reverse movement this week. Also, most polling institutes go on the field week-to-week (say Monday to Wednesday; or Friday to Sunday) and they use the same turnout model. This is why so much is made of trends between the two last polls of one institute. The study you refer (I had mentioned it here) was only applicable to the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls which are in the field every single day, leading to comparison problems if one candidate polls better on a weekend.