Pa. primary polls show cultural divisions

Beer drinkers have split evenly between Clinton and Obama.

COMBINED DISPATCHES

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton leads among bowlers, gun owners and hunters in Pennsylvania, a blue-collar trifecta that is helping her hold an edge over rival Barack Obama heading into Tuesday’s pivotal primary there.

The New York senator leads by solid margins in all three slices of working-class Pennsylvania — the political battleground where the two Democrats have waged war for control of the state, according to a new poll conducted for McClatchy Newspapers, MSNBC and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The one group where she does not have a solid lead is among beer drinkers; they split evenly between her and the Illinois senator.

Overall, Clinton leads Obama by a margin of 48-43 percent, with 8 percent still undecided. The telephone survey of 625 likely Pennsylvania voters was taken April 17-18 and had an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

“Clinton leads in Pennsylvania,” said Brad Coker, the managing partner for Mason-Dixon Polling Research, which conducted the poll.

“However, the lead doesn’t indicate she’s going to win by a large enough margin to make a serious impact on Obama’s overall delegate lead.”

Clinton leads among women, whites, Roman Catholics and Jews, voters older than 35, those looking for experience and those who rank Iraq, the economy or health care their top issues.

She also leads in central and rural Pennsylvania as well as the Pittsburgh area.

“She’s a woman, that’s the main reason,” said Catherine Nichols, a retired receptionist from New Providence, Pa., explaining why she prefers Clinton. “And she has the experience from being in the White House for so many years.”

Obama leads among blacks, voters younger than 35, Protestants, and those looking for change or honesty.

He leads in the Philadelphia area.

“I’m getting tired of the same old thing over and over. It’s time for a change,” said William Allen, a retiree from Philadelphia. “He just has a different way of thinking and bringing people together.”

Despite Obama’s solid support in some areas, Coker said that Pennsylvania’s demographics make it difficult for him to win, given his inability to draw more support from whites, the working class, or older voters. Obama pulled just 33 percent of the white vote, but 83 percent of the black vote.

“I would be surprised if Obama won Pennsylvania,” Coker said. “There are not enough African-American and young voters. It’s one of the older states.”

Ever since the two clashed in Ohio in early March — where she won with heavy support from the white working class — the two candidates have sparred over that key voting bloc in Pennsylvania.

Their campaigns have been marked by sharp disagreements over his comments claiming that small-town Pennsylvanians cling to religion and guns out of bitterness over their economic anxiety, as well as inflammatory sermons by Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

They’ve also offered dueling photo opportunities, with Obama bowling on camera, and Clinton downing a shot of whiskey and a beer.

Many voters dismissed such efforts as silly or superficial — or said they had the opposite effect than the campaigns intended.

Most saw clips of Obama bowling, for example, and several noted that he was bad at it.

“I saw the gutter ball. Why make an idiot of yourself?” said John Ferko, a retired postal worker from Phoenixville, Pa., who supports Clinton.

Indeed, Clinton seems to have won the better part of the culture clash, leading among hunters by a margin of 56-31 percent, among bowlers by 54-33 percent, and among gun owners by 53-28 percent.

Her shot and a beer gambit apparently didn’t pay off, however; self-identified beer drinkers split 44-44 percent between the two. Coker said one reason could be that beer drinkers include more blacks — Obama supporters — than the bowlers, gun owners or hunters.

Though Pennsylvanians seemed to divide along those lines, several voters said they were angry at the way the campaigns and news media played up the flash points more than such issues as the war in Iraq or the economy.

A majority of likely voters said they watched the candidates debate last week on ABC, yet just 7 percent said it influenced their vote.

Campaigning Sunday in Pennsylvania, Obama paid the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting a backhanded compliment. “Either Democrat would be better than John McCain,” he told an audience in Reading. “And all three of us would be better than George Bush.”

That drew a feisty rebuke from Clinton, who said, “We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain.”

With the Republican nomination long since secure, McCain reported his best fund-raising month of the campaign, and criticized both Democrats for advocating higher taxes that he said would worsen any recession.

But he seemed more eager to criticize the front-runner, Obama, than the former first lady. Obama’s relationship with former 1960s radical William Ayers is “an open question,” McCain said on ABC’s “This Week.” Without being asked, he said Obama had become friends with Ayers and “spent time with him while the guy was unrepentant over his activities as a member of a terrorist organization.”

Ayers, an education professor, has been quoted in an interview as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs” decades ago. Obama has said Ayers lives in his Chicago neighborhood, but that they do not speak regularly.

Two days before the Pennsylvania primary with 158 delegates at stake, Obama and Clinton observed the rituals of Sunday campaigning: a visit to church, stops at restaurants catering to families, as many public events as possible.

And blanketing the state with attack ads.

“In the last 10 years Barack Obama has taken almost $2 million from lobbyists, corporations and PACs.

The head of his New Hampshire campaign is a drug company lobbyist, in Indiana an energy lobbyist, a casino lobbyist in Nevada,” said a new Clinton commercial airing in the campaign’s final days.

If anything, Obama upped the ante with his rebuttal. His ad said he “doesn’t take money from special interest PACs or Washington lobbyists — not one dime.” Clinton does, it added, and accused her of “eleventh-hour smears.”