These polls are meaningless at this point. 6 weeks is a VERY long time in politics. I expect the gap to close, but by how much. I would love if Clinton could win PA by a 20-point margin, I just don't think it will happen.

In before Zonk and '18 point goalpost'.

I do not pay one iota of attention to pre-Convention general election match-up polls. They are very useless right now and I don't think anybody should be using them to make any important decisions. My confidence in the eventual Democratic nominee to completely whipe the floor with John McCain in November remains as high as it ever was. The man is short, old, ugly and Bush-loving. He will be destroyed and we Democrats shouldn't worry about him at all.

Triad Strategies/Susquehanna

Hillary 45 - Obama 31

Hilary 47 - McCain 44

McCain 45 - Obama 41

http://www.sunherald.com/447/story/42826 5.html

maybe we have to start reevaluating the proposition that McCain definitely puts the state on the map for the Republicans regardless of who the Democrats nominate...

Could you clarify whether you are saying McCain is more or less likely to carry PA in the general than is generally believed?

Taking anything less than 59% of the vote will clearly be a loss for Clinton in Pennsylvania.

Actually, taking anything less than 70% of the vote will mathematically be a loss for Clinton in Pennsylvania, but facts were never any barrier to continuing a campaign that has already lost nor a barrier for the media to continue to push division in a ratings bonanza.

After a month and a half of campaigning in PA two things will change:

1) Obama will come very close to Clinton.

2) Both Obama and Clinton will be comfortably ahead of McCain.

Count on both. PA will not be in play no matter who the nominee is.

How about if we put all the latest (last 30 days) polls from Pennsylvania (there's 7 total) & average them:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1284.xml?Rele aseID=1148&What=&strArea=;&s trTime=0
Obama 42 - McCain 40
Clinton 44 - McCain 42
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_c ontent/politics/election_20082/2008_pres idential_election/pennsylvania/pennsylva nia_2008_presidential_election
Obama 49 - McCain 39
Clinton 42 - McCain 44
http://www.presidentelectionpolls.com/20 08/matchups-by-state/pennsylvania.html
(Morning Call/Muhlenberg College Poll)
Obama 39 - McCain 42
Clinton 42 - McCain 41
http://www.wgal.com/download/2008/0220/1 5357472.pdf
Obama 43 - McCain 44
Clinton 46 - McCain 46
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollRepo rt.aspx?g=491de2e4-9b1b-4369-82af-badf38 3b6d7e%20
Obama 42 - McCain 47
Clinton 47 - McCain 46
http://www.sunherald.com/447/story/42826 5.html
Obama 41 - McCain 45
Clinton 47 - McCain 44
http://strategicvision.biz/political/pa_ poll_031308.htm
Obama 44 - McCain 47
Clinton 42 - McCain 48

Pennsylvania AVERAGE (7 recent polls):
Obama  42.9 - McCain 43.4  -- McCain beats Obama by 0.5
Clinton  44.3 - McCain 44.4  -- McCain beats Clinton by 0.1

To me, the difference between 0.1 and 0.5 is not statistically significant, so it seems that Obama and Clinton are evenly matched when facing McCain in PA.  The differences by region within PA are interesting in their own right - see a map of PA I did earlier today (in a diary I wrote comparing how Obama & Hillary perform nationwide & their effect on congressional races / coattails -- http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/12/1334 6/9709 ) -- scroll to bottom of linked diary for map.

With Pennsylvania being even in terms of performance against McCain, in what states is Obama significantly ahead of Clinton in terms of how they match against McCain ?? - a long list comes to mind, incl. IA, OR, WA, NV, CO, NH, VA, etc.  
Obama is clearly in a better position to compete against McCain in the fall.

My guess is Obama's PA strategy will be as follows:

Spend three weeks of intensive campaigning and registering voters throughout the state. Assess the polling at that point. If it moves only marginally in his direction, he will start campaigning more in Indiana, North Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia, and will talk more about "the 8 contests ahead" instead of PA. He blew the expectations game in OH and TX by accepting Clinton's notion that those states were somehow dispositive of general election performance or of "key" Democratic demographics.

If after three weeks the SUSA poll has the margin under 10, then Obama should continue to push hard and try to get it close to even. But even at that point he should start campaigning in the later states so as to downplay PA. Yes, Pennsylvania matters a lot. But my guess is that after Clinton and Obama spend a month and a half in the state, both will comfortably ahead of McCain in every poll.

Clinton should drop out and give any remaining money to the DNC.

Why is McCain running so well in Pennsylvania?

1.  The Democratic split really is affecting the race.

2.  One thing in the poll stood out--while Bush's approval rating was just 26%, 52% approve of his handling of terrorism, with just 38% disapproving.
This could indicate security is still a paramount issue.

3.  The state is still pretty conservative culturally, with many voters unwilling to vote for either a black or a woman.

Can we win without Pennsylvania?  It would be pretty difficult.

Damn, where is John Edwards when you need him. He creams McCain in a G.E!

Then again, we have to see how many Republicans vote for Senator Clinton.

After all, 24% of her support in Mississippi was from Republicans, as were 50,000+ in TX. With so much time to switch party affiliation before the election, there could be a lot of Republicans voting for Clinton in the closed Democratic primary and swinging the vote towards her by a fair margin.

There should be a provision that you had to be a registered Democrat as of the day McCain secured the Republican nomination.

See this story in DailyKos for more complete analysis.

This whole primary 'thing' is getting boring now. Yes it is a historic campaign, yes it has been fantastic for the party.
But I don't know about you, i'm getting fatigue. Obama has clearly won. It's time to put this whole charade over and get behind him.

HRC is waiting for a miracle messiah moment and it's now just a bore.

Was trying some cluster analysis on the Ohio results, grouping Ohio counties into 5 different bins based on population density, education, racial demographics, and income:

The red-colored counties are characterized by low income, low population density, low education and solid white populations. The ones in Appalachia (i.e., excepting the Holmes County outlier) went for Clinton at 80%. Obama did well only in the yellow, urban counties.

The blue-colored counties are similiar in characteristics, just little less so (slightly higher income, education, etc.). They went for Clinton at 70%.

This pattern is likely to play out across Pennsylvania as well. Like it or not, the red counties particularly illustrate the group Ed Rendell was talking about when he said "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate."

How that statement is controversial is beyond me. It's patently obvious. There is no way those red Ohio counties went for Hillary at 80% without a good dose of old-fashioned racism.

Clearly there are other factors at work too, but it will all probably shake out the same way in Pennsylvania too, with a decisive Clinton victory.