Obama Supporters Have Thicker Skin? Or...

Interestingly, ABC is reporting that 50% of Indiana's Clinton supporters will not vote for Obama in Novemeber if he's the nominee (33% would vote for McCain, 17% would stay home). Only 48% of the Clinton voters said that they would vote for Obama in November (presumably the last 2% are undecided). On the other hand, 59% of the Obama voters would vote for Clinton against McCain in November.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/06/primaries.change/index.html

South Carolina was even worse, only 45% of the Clinton voters said they would vote for Obama, whereas 70% of the Obama voters would be willing to vote for Clinton.

There was a similar report last time in Pennsylvania, not as extreme, but showing the same phenomenon. 25% of the Pennsylvania democrats would refuse to vote for Obama in November (choosing either to vote for McCain or sit it out), but only about 17% refuse to vote for Clinton. (It's not the most straight-forward statistic, because Pennsylvania Democrats aren't 50/50 between the candidates to begin with, they're 55/45, but it still shows that more Obama voters are willing to vote for Clinton in November than the other way around.)

http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/Story?id=4703379&page=2

Clinton is seen as having been tougher and less fair in her attacks on Obama than his have been on her. According to that ABC news article, more voters felt Clinton attacked Obama unfairly than the other way around (two-thirds vs. 50%... this in a state that Clinton won). It seems that Obama supporters are more willing to brush off and look past the attacks, and are more willing to support his opponent. This despite the fact that he has been largely more restrained, respectful, and legitimate in his attacks, which you would think would mean Clinton supporters would not find him as distasteful a choice as Obama supporters would find her. Yet polls show the reverse!. That ABC news article also said that "voters who said Obama attacked unfairly were more apt to punish him for it: Clinton won those voters by 67-33 percent." Are Obama supporters thicker skinned? Or is there something else at work?

* Maybe Obama supporters are more committed to keeping McCain out than Clinton voters are, because he is seen as more different from McCain than Clinton is.

* Maybe the fact that Obama hasn't attacked Clinton so fiercely makes her more acceptable to Obama supporters. Clinton supporters, perhaps buying into some of her unfair attacks, may be more likely to find him unacceptable, believing, as Clinton has implied, that, for example, he is not ready to be Commander-in-Chief. Obama has never said anything to indicate that he doesn't think Clinton would make a perfectly good president. Clinton's record here is less unambiguous, and her supporters may be responding to that.

Some feel Obama has gone easier on Clinton than he might have, because he knows he needs her voters in November... that is a difficult strategy if your opponent isn't playing by the same rules, and he may be hurting here because he has been less willing to inflict damage on her, making her a more acceptable choice to his base than he is to hers.

* Maybe there are more people willing-to-vote-for-a-woman-but-not-a-black-man than the other way around, which would be sad, but may be a factor.

* Maybe some women are so upset at the possibility of the first viable woman candidate being denied the nomination, that they can't get past that to possibly support the person who prevented it. Maybe some blacks feel the same resentment toward the possibility of Clinton preventing the nomination of the first viable Black candidate. But since women are about 50% of the population, and Blacks a much smaller percentage, this phenomenon would skew so that more Obama supporters could support Clinton than the other way around.

Ironically, while Obama supporters have sometimes been perceived as fanatical and cult-like, it may be the Hillary supporters who, by a larger margin, are so uncompromisingly devoted to their candidate that they would refuse to support the other in November.

For whatever reason, though, the greater "generosity," if you will, of Obama supporters could actually work to Clinton's advantage now, in the arguments she is making to persuade superdelegates that she would be stronger than Obama in November. If in fact more Obama voters would be willing to support Hillary than the other way around, then he might have a tougher hill to climb in November. Of course, that's just one of many arguments each side can make in claiming that they would be the stronger candidate against McCain.

Of the Obama supporters if the Pledged Delegate and Popular Vote Leader had the nomination taken from him by the Super Delegates or some Nuclear option.

Than lets see....

......unless he is the nominee, then he gets 100% of my support! I'm a democrat first and foremost, as should we all be.

Seriously, what the hell makes Hillary Oh so much more appealing than Obama?

Or maybe the Reagan Democrats need to sit down shut up and realize they are old and being replaced by "Obama Republicans."

Can't have that uppity man not knowing his place now, can we? :(

and the partisan gridlock, and they tend to be optimists and more open-minded. People who prefer Hillary seem to be very cynical, jaded, and unreceptive to an optimistic, hopeful message, IMO. They mocked Obama and his supporters as naive and idealistic kids who will get eaten up by the GOP, and think of themselves and their candidate as "been around the block" and wiser.

...the reason is that the Obama supporters are realizing its over, so can go back to being more gracious while the Clinton supporters are still desperately trying to get their candidate back in the game by telling the pollsters that they'll only vote Clinton. Expect that trend to reverse itself once it finally sinks in that Clinton is absolutely finished.

The polls assume she somehow gets there honest, most Obama supporters these days know she can't do that so they give her the charity "sure I would" vote. Ask the same question assuming the will of the voters is overridden and especially if she smears him to make him unelectable for it, see if the answer is the same.

I think a lot of her voters would show up for him given an honest win, if for no other reason that we've got one or two Supreme Court seats probably open in the next few years and like Obama or not the price of McCain being there for those nominations is a pretty high one to pay for a pissed off gesture. If she won dirty I don't think as many of his would show up.

It's about how they get there as much as who gets there, the polls don't really ask that part.

Sure "50% of Hillary voters" in IN won't vote for Obama in November. That same number probably won't even vote for HILLARY if it came to that. They're REPUBLICANS! The only reason why they voted yesterday was to eff with the Dem nomination process. Nothing more. We'd be crazy to believe those guys would vote for anyone besides McCain in November.

What I'm hoping is they keep their ass home on Election Day. Just sayin'...