The Electability Curve Revisited

A few months ago I made some obervations about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's primary race polling as compared to their general election electability.

(As ever I'm working from the Real Clear Politics averages of national polls)

At that time Obama seemed to be slowly gaining on Hillary in the primary race. That leveled out not long after I wrote that piece and has stayed that way for most of the intervening months. But, in recent weeks Hillarys numbers have improved into the low 40s whilst Obama's have continued to hover in the mid twenties. On the face of it Hillary seems to have picked up some undecideds and some of the people who are jumping off the Edwards wagon.

Meanwhile, the general election polls (which Joe Klein and others repeatedly call meaningless, but anyway...) show Obama's electability continuing to be better in some ways than Hillary's. Interestingly Obama does much better over Fred Thompson than Hillary, 13 % vs 4%. The question is : who are these people. They're able to think of voting for Obama but rather than vote for Hillary they'll go with Fred Thompson. Strange but true.

I think the position remains the same, Obama remains more electable but Hillary appears to be locking up more primary votes.