The Daily Background

Remember Clinton’s metric that red states where Democrats are likely to lose in the fall shouldn’t count in the primary contest? Yeah, well, I guess by that metric, we shouldn’t pay any attention to the results in Kentucky:

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton enters the final week before Kentucky’s May 20 Democratic presidential primary with a commanding 27 percentage point lead over U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, a new poll shows.

But either Democratic candidate would trail the expected Republican nominee, John McCain, in the state by double digits if the November general election were held today, according to a companion survey of likely voters.

A poll of 500 likely Democratic voters, conducted for the Lexington Herald-Leader newspaper and WKYT television, found Clinton leading Obama 58 percent to 31 percent, with 11 percent undecided.

The results reinforce the expectation that Obama will lose Kentucky, even as he seems on the verge of securing the Democratic nomination. They also put in doubt whether Kentucky will be a battleground state in the fall, despite its track record of backing the winning presidential candidate in each election since 1960.

McCain leads Obama by 25 percentage points and Clinton by 12.

Although I’m not aware of any general election polling in WV, Democrats have lost that state for two cycles in a row…

(Of course these voters have the right to have a say in the nomination as I’ve said before, I’m just being snarky here…)

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog