Hillary Gets 4 New Delegates and has Nice Poll Showings

by D. Cupples  |    No Quarter reports that 4 "automatic delegates" from New York are supporting Hillary Clinton: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, former Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and New York Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo.

Frankly, I don't know what an "automatic delegate" is or if it is the same as a "super delegate."  About recent polls:

A Rasmussen poll regarding Indiana's primary shows Hillary at 46% and Obama at 41%: with a 5% margin of error, based on 400 likely voters surveyed by phone (April 29), and 13% undecided.

An TeleResearch Group poll re: Indian's primary shows Clinton at 48% and Obama at 38%: with margin of error of 3.3%, based on phone surveys of 943 likely voters (April 25-29), and 13% undecided.

It's interesting that both polls listed above show the same percentage of undecideds yet very different results regarding committed supporters.

Gallup's daily tracking poll regarding the Democratic presidential nomination nationwide shows Hillary at 49% and Obama at 45%.  Gallup states:

"The four percentage point Clinton advantage in the April 28-30 polling is not statistically significant, but suggests slight movement in her favor after she and Obama had been tied the previous six days. Obama had held a significant lead over Clinton throughout much of April. The current margin is the biggest in Clinton's favor since March 17-19 polling."

Gallup's recent general-election poll shows Obama behind McCain "by a statistically significant 47% to 43% margin among registered voters" and shows Clinton and McCain tied at 46%.

Memorandum has commentary.

Comments

[Adam]

"Automatic" delegates is another term for superdelegates.

These particular delegates are "add-on" delegates, which are extra superdelegates that get put in place at the state convention. Generally, whoever won the state controls the convention and will get to name most of the add-on delegates.

Today, Obama got 3 add-on delegates in Illinois and Clinton got 4 in New York. Maryland will be naming its two this weekend, probably Obama supporters. You get the pattern. It's likely that when all is said and done, Obama will come out 5-10 delegates ahead in add-ons, out of about 60.

So they're not exactly the same as the other superdelegates, although they are included in the superdelegate numbers that people talk about when they say that a certain number are supporting this or that candidate and/or how many have not committed.

[Sparky Duck]

I would throw out the Tele Research poll, since I am not sure how many people have even heard of it.

[D. Cupples]

Sparky,

I don't really trust polls. I do like to compare them, though.

I've never heard of TeleResearch, either. An Indiana TV station hired the outfit. Here's the article link: http://www.theindychannel.com/politics/16106143/detail.html?rss=ind&psp=news