As I noted earlier this week, Barack Obama had slipped back into the lead in the national polls after a brief post-TexOhio bounce for Hillary Clinton. Judging from the latest numbers, it looks like he’s sustaining that lead.
First, from Rasmussen:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton 50% to 42% in the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination (see recent daily results). This is the first time Obama has ever reached 50% in fifteen months of daily polling on the race. Among African-American voters, Obama leads 84% to 9%. Among White voters, Clinton leads 50% to 39%. Two-thirds of voters who now support Clinton are women. Among white women Clinton leads by twenty-five.
Obama has also crossed the 50% threshold in the Gallup Poll:
PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton in national Democratic nomination preferences by a statistically significant 6-percentage point margin, 50% to 44%, according to Gallup Poll Daily tracking interviews from March 11-13.
This is the largest advantage either contestant has had in the race since late February. Obama had a strong showing in Thursday night interviews, which added to his slim lead in interviews conducted Tuesday and Wednesday gives him his current 6-point margin.
And, as the chart shows, the Hillary bump last week was really just a bump in the road for Obama:
It will be interesting to watch these polls over the next week or so to see if the Jeremiah Wright story has any impact on the race.
