ABOUT FIRST READ

First Read is an analysis of the day's political news, from the NBC News political unit. First Read is updated throughout the day, so check back often.

Chuck Todd, NBC Political Director

Mark Murray, NBC Deputy Political Director

Domenico Montanaro, NBC News Political Reporter



Poll: Clinton regains national lead

Posted: Saturday, April 19, 2008 2:45 PM by Domenico Montanaro

From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro
Hillary Clinton has regained the national lead, 46%-45%, over Obama, according to the Gallup Tracking poll. Clinton had been down by 11 points less than a week ago. This is the first time Clinton has led in the poll since March 20.

The general-election match up has seen no change. Clinton leads McCain 46%-44%, and Obama leads McCain 45%-44%. The poll was conducted from April 16-18, after the Philadelphia debate.

Another poll, however, shows a much different picture with Obama leading Clinton among Democrats nationally by a whopping 19 points. Newsweek shows Obama with a 54%-35% lead. The two were deadlocked in the prior Newsweek poll, taken right after the Texas-Ohio primaries. The poll was conducted by Princeton Survey Research from April 16-17 -- also after the debate.

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Polls are different on all news channels,depending on who you are watching. Pennsylvania people will decide the true polls,on Tuesday,after Clinton sweeps the state.
Hillary proved in all debates she is the most prepared and the smartest of all candidates, republican or democrat.  Obama complained the last 45 minutes in the last dabate but he wasnt any good in the next 45 either.  Bottom line: Im voting for the smartest guy in the room.  And that is Hillary.

National polls like Gallup tracking poll and Newsweek poll have not impact on the trend of individual primary like Pennsylvania.

Obama-Clinton National polls within a week before March 4th primaries when Hillary Clinton won TX, OHIO and RI showed the following results:

USA Today/Gallup showed Obama +12
CBS News/ NY Times showed Obama +16
Pew Research showed Obama +9
ABC/Washington showed Obama +7
"Clinton drew a crowd of 400 supporters in PA a day after Barak Obama drew a crowd of over 30,000 at his rally"

Funny that Clinton is telling us not to throw our vote away on someone who is drawing crowds 10-50 times larger than herself.

The Clintons must really think we are stupid.
Get a grip, people !!

Hillary is road-kill !!
She's dishonest, unethical and crooked

Hillary ran an incompetent, dysfunctional campaign
You govern the way you campaign

She'd be as bad as Bill with haircut-gate, file=gate, travel-gate and bimbo explosions

Bill Clinton was so bad, he let the Republicans take over the House and Senate

Why re-cycle the FAILED Clinton Presidency ?
You want his and hers impeachments ?

It's time to smother the crooked, imcompetent little Clinton smear-machine...


Obama '08
Integrity counts
Character counts
Honesty counts
National polls don't mean squat.

Last Dec., Hillary was on top 20-25% points.

Let's not forget, many folks do not own land lines and have cell phones.  Especially YOUNG VOTERS who are more PRO-OBAMA!

Hillary Clinton is an embarrassment to America. She is not going to win and all she is doing is making it harder for her party and therefore for the country. Shame on Hillary!
The Dems have saddled themselves with two candidates that for different reasons cannot win in November. However, if they are loony enough to nominate Obama I predict this will be an election reminiscent of McGovern's 1972 debacle. Obama's nomination will probably result not only in a Republican victory for president, but the Senate will almost certainly go Republican and the House may also flip.
Clinton says not to waste your vote, Penn, Indiana.
Here's the facts: her people say she only has a one in ten chance of winning the nomination. Attack dog Carville, says, its a little better than one out of ten chance.  Maybe one in nine.
So, HRC, we wont waste our votes on you. You have no chance, according to your own staff in interviews with Fox.
Carville even backs the story. You have little chance,  and that would require all the remaining supers to choose you, and as we can see from yesterdaysnew commits, Bill's own cabinet member Robert Reich,  prefers Obama.
That means by your logic, we should vote for the leader and apparent Dem nominee, Sen Barak Hussein Obama!  We will do as you say.
Thanks for the good advice. You were right for once.
I wonder if the polls will change significantly once democrats find out that Hillary Clinton privately dissed moveon.org and democratic activists?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/celeste-fremon/clinton-slams-democratic_b_97484.html

That poll waon't stay you stupid clinton supporters, she'll come up with anoher lie only to bring her down or perhaps the peter paul trial will happen sooner than later.  By the way Hillary pay Ohio the 50,000 you owe them you scumbag.  And just to spite her all the Obama supporters will vote for McCain you saw the show of hands.  Just think 4 more years of bush administration. you idiots
I am delighted to see Hillary ahead in the polls.  I personally don't put much stock in them.  The pollsters do not poll enough people.

I hope and pray that Hillary will sock it to Obama in PA and so on from there.  I feel strongly that Obama would be a very bad choice for America.
Funny how clintonistas think the polls count now.

People need to grow up.

Hillary is wasting everyone's time and really just helping the republicans.
Taking the gallup daily tracking seriously every day is ridiculous. These daily tracking polls respond to statistical noise and outliers. Given Obama's constant lead outside the margin of error for nearly two weeks, I bet this is an outlier, and the gallup will once again show Obama near fifty by Monday.

First Read,
You should wait to see a few consecutive days of daily tracking polls before you embarrass yourselves by overreacting to outliers and statistical noise.
Maybe people are finally waking up and realizing that Hillary can handle the recession and balance our budget.  Sooner or later voters had to realize that Obama is not ready to be POTUS, he needs to get a reality check on the company he keeps and his views on average white people and our relationship with religion and guns.  I would just like to tell Michelle that I don't need Obama to heal my soul, I need a president who can get the job done - Hillary!
No she doesn't!!  I'm not going to let 1209 "likely democratic voters" Speak for the rest of the country.  We all know the truth and the media is hiding it!!!!
Hmmm.  Why does no one speak to the fact that the MSNBC post debate survey shows that people are saying that OBAMA won almost two to one over CLINTON?  Why is no one talking about the Penn fiasco?  Why is no one talking about the tape of CLINTON on Huffinton Post as she attacks moveon.org?  Why is no one asking what CLINTON meant by "massive retailation" and an "umbrella" of defense that encompasses Saudi Arabia?
I wonder how many of these comments emanate from the Clinton War Room.
Who chooses your headlines , Hillary or Bill ? When Obama is ahead in Gallup, it is a small deal, but a one point lead for Hill after all the dumping that the MSM has been doing on Obama ,, and big headlines from you.
"The poll was conducted by Princeton Survey Research from April 16-17 -- also after the debate."

Actually, HALF the poll was taken AFTER the debate, and pollers make it a point to note the views of those polled before and after the debate remained constant:  

In fact, "Stacy DiAngelo of Princeton Survey Research Associates , that of the registered voters who were surveyed 517 were interviewed after the debate and 692 before. She added that the views of those surveyed remained largely constant."

Nice try FIRST READ, to try to spin this poll in Clinton's favor.  This is clear bias!  So don't try to discredit this poll in favor of Obama by suggesting the debate was not accounted for.  B/c it clearly was.  You should do the honorable thing and edit your article.
There is ONLY ONE QUESTION that really matters in all this: WHY do "el rushbo", "little billy", and glenn beck  ALL want to face hillary rather than Obama?
Answer me THAT ONE clintonistas and DO IT WITHOUT the doublespeak your candidate resorts to whenever she is caught "mispeaking" as in getting caught fabricating a COMPLETE LIE about what happened when she & Chelsea landed on that airstrip in bosnia!
(As if people that can't admit Hil has been around republicans so long she has imprinted thier group persona like a baby duck COULD give a straight answer to that question)
Where are the Obama supporters?  Seem awfully quiet.

I guess the race is not given to the quick, nor the swift or rock star or those who give pillow to candidates, but to the one WHO ENDURES.

Keep enduring Clinton, this wolf is getting exposed for real.  There is still more issues of Obama to come out.  Trust.  All you have to do is watch Fox News with Sean Hannity.

Let the Obama Titantic that has hitting the iceberg, sink.
Was This Poll Done By The Clinton News Network I Think So
I simply do not trust Obama's competency and character because with myself being a chemical dependency counselor he reminded me too much of Bush. Obama has such a sophisicated denial and  psychological defense mechanism similar to Bush. Obama is very good in appearing transparent, however, is not transparent. Obama is very good with his vocabularies and speeches,however, lacks the scoreboard himself as indicated by his work as a Senator...he is a real greenie backed by his voting record. Seeing him with Kerry is like seeing Kerry running for Presidency thru Obama like Cheney running the presidency thru Bush like an old man at the end of the movie "THe Wizard of Oz" using the control power handle. Bush was too a greenie over his head in how he handle the various event faced our country, The Republican will again Swift Boat Obama like they did with Kerry. It make me sick to see the Obama endorser Kerry hugged Obama like Bush hugged McCain. Obama is soo naive and selfishly self centered with false pride like a high schooler baskerball player wanted to get into the big league rather than going thru college. He is playing on his novelty with the high percentage black people Obama supporters and the young adult and the young college student Obama's supporters...it would be interesting to see what percentage of them also use alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine like Obama has during his college days as mentioned in his book. Interesting questions, huh? I must raher have John Edward over Obama...still I take the lesser of two evils..I 'll take Hillary anytime over Obama...she is more open and creative w/ solution thasn Obama talking about changes like Bush talk about security.

Steve P., Washington
Why is the headline of the article "Clinton Regains National Lead" when Obama is up 20 points in the more reliable poll of the two?  The Newseek poll has less of a samplying error, too.  Change the headline, its only fair.  It is misleading.
PA is going to be like Ohio.  Trust.  People know who can be a leader, and who is just faking.  The economy is the issue and Clinton is better than Obama.  That will pull her over including PA Gov. Rendell.

So Geoff, stick in NY and keep quiet over PA politcs.
I simply do not trust Obama's competency and character because with myself being a chemical dependency counselor he reminded me too much of Bush. Obama has such a sophisicated denial and  psychological defense mechanism similar to Bush. Obama is very good in appearing transparent, however, is not transparent. Obama is very good with his vocabularies and speeches,however, lacks the scoreboard himself as indicated by his work as a Senator...he is a real greenie backed by his voting record. Seeing him with Kerry is like seeing Kerry running for Presidency thru Obama like Cheney running the presidency thru Bush like an old man at the end of the movie "THe Wizard of Oz" using the control power handle. Bush was too a greenie over his head in how he handle the various event faced our country, The Republican will again Swift Boat Obama like they did with Kerry. It make me sick to see the Obama endorser Kerry hugged Obama like Bush hugged McCain. Obama is soo naive and selfishly self centered with false pride like a high schooler baskerball player wanted to get into the big league rather than going thru college. He is playing on his novelty with the high percentage black people Obama supporters and the young adult and the young college student Obama's supporters...it would be interesting to see what percentage of them also use alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine like Obama has during his college days as mentioned in his book. Interesting questions, huh? I must raher have John Edward over Obama...still I take the lesser of two evils..I 'll take Hillary anytime over Obama...she is more open and creative w/ solution thasn Obama talking about changes like Bush talk about security.

Steve P., Washington
WOW! Gallup poll proves that Democrats are incapable of doing simple math! Hillary supporters are just like her, do and say anything to win! Oops, forgot that they CANNOT win the delegate count or the popular vote. She can only become the nominee if she first destroys the democratic party and would ensure a John McCain victory. WAKE UP MORONS!!! Do you really want a 6-3 or 7-2 Conservative Supreme Court for the next 40 years????? Just because Hillary is an obstinant, narcisstic and selfish individual it doesn't mean that you also have to follow her blindly into oblivion!!!!!
The media still thinks they can manipulate the American public's opinion.  I conduct my own poll each time I visit the gas station or my wife returns from the grocery store.  We need a major paradigm shift in this country.  Obama offers us that.  The Clintons (obviously Bill will be co-president) offer us more the same.  Go Obama '08.  
who cares about this one all of a sudden?..this poll was paid by bill clinton just like he owns stock with abc news and he make sure that the debate was about tabloid not real issues!!..hey, where is monica?...i still say that obama can win this so that this country will have a real race for the first time and bring out all the scandals against mccain...hillary is the biggest liar as a senator of all time!!..she isn't different from a man or a dog!!...change needs to start now and get rid of all ol school politics as well old political figures!!..obama will win this!!
Clinton The one who cleaned out the Whitehouse Travel Office and sleep around with other lady's or the that just lies I mean you can go on and on but as you know they need to ask her about some things and see said thw news is hard on her
The media still thinks they can manipulate the American public's opinion.  I conduct my own poll each time I visit the gas station or my wife returns from the grocery store.  We need a major paradigm shift in this country.  Obama offers us that.  The Clintons (obviously Bill will be co-president) offer us more the same.  Go Obama '08.  
This has to be Push Polls
National polls mean nothing until after the PA primary.

I thought that is what Clinton was touting...?
Enjoy your Clinton moment while it lasts you HRC backers because it won’t last.  The reality is the numbers are still stacked against her, the polls have been inaccurate and the super delegates know better than to go against the people’s choice.  It will be Obama vs. McCain come November.
Newsweek is never steady. Gallup is used by all for a reason. It's reliable. I'm from Alabama (a state Obama won) and if he came back down here and had to take another vote....he more than likely wouldn't win. The honeymoon is over. Obama is just another politician now.


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