In all the polls I've seen Obama has been in the low to mid 40s. Clinton typically gets two-thirds of the undecideds, so my guess is 54-44 Clinton with 2 for the others. This will net her 12 delegates. Neither the popular vote or delegate count will help her.

A 10 point victory in PA is a defeat for Clinton. She needs to do much, much better than that.

"Drudge is running a big headline claiming..."

Quick. How many things are wrong with this sentence?

I agree with Kevin--Marshall, who I usually agree with, left a few variables out of the equation.

However, at this point, Clinton is not making herself inevitable--she is trying to make Obama evitable. For a lot of Pennsylvania voters, I think they are weighing the choice of going for Obama to end the race or going with Clinton to keep it alive. If these numbers are real, the campaign will continue on to North Carolina and Indiana (even though anybody who crunches the numbers will agree that it ended in Wisconsin over a month ago).

Comparing final polls in Ohio with the results and final polls in Penn, and assuming the late-breaking go for Hill/O in the same proportions as Ohio, I prophesize an 8-point Hillary victory in PA. Not enough.

Methinks this is more likely a leak from the Obama camp -- that certainly makes a lot more sense.

Agreeing with Marshall, Reino and others.

This is about motivating the troops. If it's a guaranteed rout (either way) her people will stay home. Announcing a 10 pt lead could cause complacency.

That's not saying that Clinton's people didn't brag about the poll to the wrong people, I just don't think it's a purposeful leak to Drudge.

It's interesting that the Pennsylvania voters are so persistently behind Clinton. Probably, they just are convinced that, no matter how well he does in the primary, a guy named Barack with a Kenyan dad is going to sink against so-called war-hero and rich-white-man John McCain when all the "you're not a patriot you didn't put your hand over your heart etc." mudslinging starts coming out in earnest.

If we'd got behind Clinton, maybe we could do it, but Barack is a real risk.

For the record, I'm not trying to salvage Clinton now. She's probably irreparably opened a hole in her campaign by submitting to make the "sniper fire" remarks- no matter whose lame idea that was. If she ran in the general, it would be repeated in ads relentlessly, be brought up in interviews and debates, and make her look like a fraud and an idiot.

We've got to settle for Obama now, and it's probably a tough battle, and will recall all of us to put our backs into it, hitting not only Obama's campaign specific talking points, but trying to soften up the conservatives on some of the core voter issues (religion, abortion).

I don't really understand the "expectations" argument at this stage--it's not Iowa anymore. Clinton is facing a very real deficit in delegates and needs to erase it, not merely do better than expected. Al Gore exceeded expectations in November 2000, and all it got him was an Oscar.

We all need to vote for Obama tomorrow because Rush Limbaugh is going to claim victory if Clinton wins.

Don't let Rush win, PLEASE!!!!

We've got to settle for Obama now, and it's probably a tough battle, and will recall all of us to put our backs into it, hitting not only Obama's campaign specific talking points, but trying to soften up the conservatives on some of the core voter issues (religion, abortion).

Sorry, that was supposed to be "require" not "recall," and "their core voter issues" not "the core voter issues."

We'rr basically faced with the task of, within 6 months, overcoming enormous amounts of deeply-founded prejudice to get voters to vote for (the person they'll see as) Sen. Black Power Foreigner over Sen. John Wayne.

No idea what Drudge is up to and really really really don't care. As to Hillary, she's got to work through her issues with coming to terms with the fact that she will never be president. The sooner she can work them through, the better off the rest of us will be. And regarding the PA vote, we'll know what it'll be in about 30 hours, and there's nothing any of us are going to do to influence it much between now and then, so relax.

I think the expectations game died before we got to Texas and Ohio.

First, definitions: the 'expectatons game' is in progress when a candidate's 'success' in a primary is judged not in some sort of absolute terms, but against the consensus of how the talking heads said the candidate was expected to do.

Now, what happened in Ohio and Texas? Hillary beat expectations, winning OH by 10 instead of 6, and winning the popular vote in Texas by 4 instead of a dead heat.

And what happened next? Hillary got a splash for a day or two, then everyone looked at the delegate arithmetic, and realized Hillary was still in the soup.

And so for the past seven weeks, the storyline has been Hillary versus the near-inevitability of the delegate arithmetic.

Same thing tomorrow. Let's say the poll consensus of 6 points sinks in. If Hillary wins by 10, it won't help her for more than a day or two - just like after TX/OH. After that, the reality of the delegate arithmetic will sink in again, and that'll go back to being the story - with the added twist that her last big chance to gain on delegates will now be behind her.

Gene in Chicago--
You're not agreeing with me. A 10-point win in this case is a narrow victory--it is barely enough to justify keeping the campaign going. Anything less makes Hillary Clinton the next Mike Huckabee. (I already think of her that way, but some people still don't.)

Occam's Razor indicates that anything Drudge says he got from the Clinton campaign is simply a fabrication.

If it's a leak, then her internal polling is showing at least a 15-point lead.

I'm still waiting to hear more about Bill Clinton's love child.

Drudge is always right.

Occam's Razor indicates that anything Drudge says he got from the Clinton campaign is simply a fabrication. Aaron S. Veenstra at 3:47 PM/i>

..."We categorically deny" the report, Wolfson said during a campaign media conference call Monday. "Anybody that wants to follow up on this, I suggest they get a copy of the poll ... because there is no copy of the poll."...

I think if anything it came from the Obama campaign. First of all, it's been subtle, but Drudge has definitely shown an Obama bias in his reporting. Second, a red letter headline like that does 2 things, raises expectations, and motivates the opposing voters. The day before New Hampshire, there was a poll all over the net that had Obama up by 1 or 2 points. Then he lost by 10. I think his surge at the end "woke up" the Hillary voters and carried her to a sound victory rather than a statistical tie.

Kevin, I never thought I would be able to say this, but ...Hillary's camp has over the past six weeks found their sea legs and are running better than Obama. One gets the impression that Obama is trying to sit on his lead. His constant complaining, his desire o have Hillary quit, his little mistakes here and there... This race is going to continue to get closer...FL and MI are going to get counted in the end. The clincher is the AP poll of super delegates that have explained that only 10% of them will solely rely on delegate counts...10%...this race is closer than anyone wants to admit...

I think if anything it came from the Obama campaign. First of all, it's been subtle, but Drudge has definitely shown an Obama bias in his reporting.

Subtle? You've got to be bleeping kidding me. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Matt Drudge has every bit as much right to pummel Hillary as Taylor Branch has to pummel Obama. But subtlety ain't Matt's calling card.