Democratic Tracking Poll: President

Barack Obama 42
Hillary Clinton 40

Everyone's been wondering the last week where John Edwards' supporters were going to go. So we asked a question specifically about that so that we could produce a crosstab on whether his folks were going now for Clinton or Obama.

A funny thing happened though. It turns out a lot more people say they supported Edwards for President now that he's dropped out than actually supported him when he was running.

Since the start of 2007, Edwards never polled above 40% in any publicly released poll in North Carolina. But in the poll we did Wednesday night, 48% of respondents said they had supported him when he was running compared to just 52% who said they didn't. If they really had been for him, he might still be in the race!

I thought that was amusing. But we have no more clarity on where his former supporters are going now than we did before. Of the group who said they were Edwards folks 41% are for Clinton and 41% for Obama. That's a wash, and the fact that even after a week there's so much ambiguity about who is benefiting from Edwards leaving the contest probably means that it isn't doing one candidate too much better than the other.

Interesting findings:

-Clinton leads Obama 42-40 among registered Democrats, but Obama leads 62-25 among unaffiliated voters, hence his overall lead.
-The gender gap is there but not huge. Clinton leads 43-40 with women, Obama leads 45-36 among men.
-The racial gap is huge though. Obama leads among black voters 67-19, but trails 48-31
with whites.
-As our polling has shown in many southern states, Obama leads in every age group except with senior citizens.

Full results here