Slow day in polls and superdelegate news

Sunday is a slow news day. After 17 superdelegate endorsement in the space of 48 hours on Friday and Saturday, only 1 announced her support today: Young Democrat Crystal Strait announced she was endorsing Barack Obama explaining that, "Barack Obama has shown a real commitment to young voters in his campaign and in response young people have overwhelmingly voted and caucused for Obama in these primary contests."

However expected, this endorsement gets Obama one vote closer to the nomination as the pool of uncommitted superdelegates continues to decrease. Note also that 46 superdelegates (about a sixth of the total of "uncomnitted superdelegates) have yet to be chosen because they are add-ons states in which the state party has not yet finalized selections. Most of the add-ons (though by no means all) that are designated tend to already be supporters of a candidate, so the pool of superdelegates that Obama and Clinton are hoping to convince is even smaller than it looks; this is obviously bad news for Hillary.

Meanwhile, three new general election polls have been released this week-end. First, the LA Times-Bloomberg national poll:

• Both Democrats lead McCain. Clinton leads 47% to 38%, while Obama is ahead 46% to 40%.

• Clinton performs much better among voters with an income of less than $40K: She leads 50% to 29% while Obama is only ahead 43% to 45%. Among the highest-income group, however, Obama is slightly stronger than Clinton: She trails by 6, he trails by 1.

• The two Democrats also differ based on gender (Clinton leads by 21% among women, trails by 12% among men, Obama leads by 13% and trails b 3%), partisan affiliation (Obama is 9% weaker among registered Democrats but 10% stronger among independents). Contrary to what we might think, it looks like Obama's weakness among Dems comes from people who identify themselves as liberal (he is 13% weaker in that group), so not necessarily the white blue-collar base.

With the Democratic primary drawing to a close, polls testing both Clinton and Obama will become more rare so this might be one of our last opportunities to reiterate how different Clinton and Obama's general-election coalitions are and how remarkable it is that the two Democrats are arriving at roughly the same final numbers poll after poll considering the different paths they take to get there. Obama's relative weakness among women, registered Democrats and lower-income voters is compensated by his relative strength among men, independents and higher-income voters.

What this confirms is how different their two electoral maps would have looked and how the electability difference rests on a state-by-state basis rather than a national analysis. Rasmussen's new general election poll from Oregon, for example, confirms that Obama is much stronger in the Northwest (Oregon and Washington):

• Obama has opened a double-digit lead, 51% to 39%. Clinton has strengthened her position and leads 46% to 40%. Last month, McCain led Clinton by 6% and Obama led McCain by the same margin. Obama has always looked strong in Oregon.

• Rasmussen also polled Michigan, however, and finds troubling news for Democrats as McCain continues to be surprisingly strong. He edges out Obama by 1 percent, 45% to 44%, and is tied with Clinton at 44%.
  

Conventional wisdom would hold that Oregon is a tighter state than Michigan in the general election, but Obama's appeal to Western independents could help him put the Northwest away, concentrating on a state like Colorado; but he certainly cannot afford to lose a state with as many electoral votes as Michigan and the GOP is certainly preparing to make the argument that Obama was nominated on the back of Michigan voters if the DNC does not resolve the rogue primary mess in the weeks ahead.