An update on Pennsylvania Democratic Party Primary

Here is my update on Pennsylvania Democratic primary.

The latest and final round of reliable public polls seem to affirm that Senator Clinton is leading by about 6-7 points. Rasmussen and Survey USA polls both of which use automated calls, show 5-6 points lead for Senator Clinton. Mason-Dixon and Zogby (tracking) polls, both which use live interviews, also show5-6 points for Senator Clinton. There are other polls (American Research Group, Quinnipiac, Strategic Vision and SuffolkUniversity) that show a range 7-13 points lead for Senator Clinton, and one of them -- just one of them i.e. Public Policy Polling (PPP) -- shows Senator Obama leading by about 3 points, 49-46 (PPP has been quite reliable, and it was both in direction and magnitude correct in its final polled forecasts in Ohio and Texas.)

There are reports that suggest that Senator Clinton's (own) internal polling suggests a 11-points lead for her. Further, Senator Clinton has just released a last-minute political advertisement that is dark and wonders on the imponderables, -- it even has an image of Osama bin Laden -- and asks the question, "Who do you think what it takes?" This is a sterner version of Clinton's (really, Mondale's 1984) celebrated 3 am advertisement that saturated the Ohio and Texas markets and that was considered responsible for Obama's unexpected loss in Texas and a larger magnitude of loss in Ohio.

So a substantial (7-9 points) Clinton victory appears likely. However, there are tow huge caveats. First is a comparative (empirical) observation about the publicly measured preference of votes and the movement of this preference in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Examining just the averages of the polls in the days leading up to the primaries, Senator Clinton led in Ohio by about 5 percent (47.8 to 42.4) with three days to go. And this average lead of about 5 points persisted at least for about 4 days before we started seeing an uptick for Senator Clinton. With three days to go, Clinton's average support grew from 47.8 to 50.1 -- a statistically significant 2.3 percent increase. In the same time-period, Obama's support remained flat -- the final number being 43.0 which was statistically insignificant. So there was a clear, statistical uptick in support for Clinton in the last three days and the upward trend carried over to the election day with the final tally providing Clinton with a 10-points victory margin.

However, in Pennsylvania the numbers just don't show that trend. For the last 4-5 days, the average lead for Senator Clinton has been about 5 points (average support of about 47.5 to 42.2.) However, today -- with one day to go -- Senator Clinton's support has edged from 47.5 to 49.0 -- a significant gain of 1.5 percent. However, Obama's support too has edged upward today from 42.2 to 43.6 -- about 1.4 percent increase, the same magnitude of increase as observed for Clinton. So the differential appears to be stable, and we don't quite yet see the electorate breaking in favor of Clinton.

Second, the registration of substantial number of new voters and their distribution in the various regions of Pennsylvania tilts the field in favor of Obama. This is best analyzed by Jeanne Cummings of Politico as abstracted below.

"It's clear that a disproportionate share of the 300,000 new Democratic voters this year are young, and they're underrepresented in opinion surveys because pollsters don't have their cell-phone numbers. People under 34 represent 25 percent of the state's Democratic electorate, but they're only 7 percent of the likely voters in the Daily News/Franklin & Marshall poll that showed Clinton up by 6 percentage points.

According to the Secretary of State’s office, since January about 217,000 new voters have registered for the April 22 primary, the vast majority of whom signed up as Democrats. In Philadelphia, by far the state’s largest city, more than 12,000 new Democrats were added to the rolls in the final week before the March registration deadline, compared to just 509 Republicans.

That statewide Democratic surge has been accompanied by a flood of party-switching. More than 178,000 voters have changed their party status since January — and the Democrats have captured 92 percent of those voters. In Delaware County, a Philadelphia suburb once home to a storied Republican machine, nearly 14,000 voters have switched their party affiliation to Democratic since January compared to just 768 who became Republicans.

A poll of those switchers and new registrants released by Madonna last week found that Obama was the preferred candidate for 62 percent of them. Clinton insiders said they are also bracing for the same 60-40 split among newly registered Democrats. Depending on turnout, Madonna (of Franklin and Marshall) said, those newcomers could help Obama cut a Clinton victory margin by 2 to 3 percentage points and keep her below a double-digit win that would breath new life into the hard-fought race.

For instance, about 143,400 Democratic newcomers – including newly registered and party switchers — are in Philadelphia and its suburbs. Those numbers could help Obama rack up big margins in what is considered his strongest turf. About 28,400 of them are in or around Pittsburgh, an urban area Clinton needs to counter Obama’s Philly support. Another 30,000 of them hail from the generally smaller, conservative counties in the state’s northwest and southwest, a region that Clinton is hoping to draw Reagan Democrats back to the party and to her cause.

Finally, the Clinton-friendly sections of central Pennsylvania are now home to more than 70,000 of the Democrats’ new recruits, including more than 6,000 in Centre County which is home to Penn State University. An area where Obama and Clinton are likely to battle for voters is the state’s northeast corridor. Those ten counties, ranging from Carbon to Wyoming, have recorded more than 40,000 newly registered Democrats and party switchers. In Lehigh County, for instance, Clinton is expected to have an edge in working-class Allentown. But Obama could tap a vein of votes from the host of small universities and liberal arts colleges based in the county. "

Update on Tuesday, April 22 morning (9 am). Based on a flurry of additional polls (new Insider Advantage and Zogby polls among others), I can now report that there is now a more discernible uptick in the average measure of the preferences for Senator Clinton than for Senator Obama since yesterday. Clinton's average preference has grown from 47.6 to 49.3, and Obama's from 42.3 to 43.3 -- a statistically significant difference of 0.7 percent in the upward tick. Further, the trend estimator from the polls of last two days now shows a lead of about 6.6 points for Senator Clinton as against a lead of about 5.3 points on Sunday. The possibilities from the new registrations and the voter turnout still remain.