Obama and Edwards
By Atrios notes something puzzling about the latest Cook poll on Democratic presidential candidates:
More interesting in the poll results is the fact that Obama/Edwards
supporters don’t seem inclined to support the other one. Clinton is a popular
2nd choice as well as 1st one, and when Obama or Edwards are excluded from the
poll their support largely shifts to Clinton.
I don’t get this at all. I understand why many might support Clinton (I don’t) and I understand lots of reasons to prefer Obama to Edwards and vice versa. But it would make a fair amount of sense to me that Obama/Edwards support would be more interchangable. Mine certainly is; I honestly don’t know who I’d vote for if the primary were today. Clinton strikes me as generating all sorts of reasons (some reasonable, others not) to adopt an “anyone but” approach to the primary. I suppose I could see why Health Care centric Edwards supporters might go with Clinton as a second choice, if they watched that Health Care candidate symposium in which Obama appeared rather outclassed. I can’t imagine that’s on too many voters minds, though. Antiwar-centric Obama supporters have no reason whatsoever to prefer Clinton to Edwards, as far as I can see.