Hillary Clinton’s once overwhelming lead in California has crumbled to less than five points – and the trend is now running strongly against her.
Driven in large part by Obama’s crushing victory in SC and what appears to be a new level of distrust for former president Bill Clinton, voters are turning away from Clinton’s candidacy in droves.
Less than one month ago, Hillary Clinton led Barack Obama by more than 20 points in California, but today her lead has all but vanished into a slender margin of error. At the same time, Obama is the beneficiary of a massive upsurge in his popularity. The Obama trend now threatens to upset Clinton’s once commanding lead in national polls.
Tomorrow, Zogby International and the Rasmussen Surveys will begin publishing their tracking surveys for key states on Super Tuesday. Planetary expects sharp upward trends for Obama across a broad spectrum of Super Tuesday states from coast-to-coast with California now definitely in play.
Obama will lead in the South with comfortable margins in Georgia and Alabama.
Obama is also surging upward in Connecticut where he will be running neck and neck with Clinton who enjoyed a commanding lead in the home state of Joseph Lieberman and the Bush family only one week ago.
Due to the archaic formulations in various states for selecting delegates – in some cases awarded only within Congressional districts (an anti-democratic holdover from the past that is tinged with racist overtones) – Obama could win the popular majorities in several states yet trail Hillary Clinton in the delegate count.
The Clinton campaign’s latest moves include intensification of their lobbying efforts to seat the outlaw Florida delegation – a state the DNC stripped of all bona fide delegates due to the shift forward of the primary – a move that was originally expected to help Clinton who was then the clear frontrunner.
The Clinton organization has adopted a very hard line on the Florida outlaws that they believe may well decide the outcome of the nomination at what could become a brokered and divisive convention in Denver this August.
The Republican nomination is now all but decided: John McCain will be the presidential nominee. Mitt Romney may well make a move for the Vice Presidency in a mirror image of the Reagan-Bush ticket of 1980.
