In New Jersey, a Monmouth/Gannett poll shows impressive-sized leads for both Democrats: Hillary Clinton leads John McCain by 14 points, while Barack Obama leads him by fully 24 points. This result is so optimistic for the Democrats as to frankly stretch credulity, and I know very little about the Monmouth/Gannett polling shop. At the same time, there have been a handful of decidely optimstic polling results for the Democrats in recent days (such as their performance in Indiana in the Selzer poll), while at the same time both are doing fairly well in the Rasmussen tracker. The conventional wisdom that the enlongated primary season may be hurting the Democrats does not have a lot of evidenciary wisdom behind it. As I have said before, it isn’t when it ends that the problem, but how it ends that counts.
Also, in Arizona, an ASU/Cronkite poll has Barack Obama trailing home-stater John McCain by 9 points, and Hillary Clinton trailing him by 16. Home state effects typically run at about 6-7 points (although vary a lot from candidate to candidate), and so Arizona might be a fringe-competitive state for Obama if John McCain were not the nominee, though probably not for Clinton.
Although some of this is the result of our recent methodological changes, Barack Obama’s Win Percentage is presently the highest it has been since April 2, and his electability edge over Clinton is the largest it has been since March 31.