Gallup: Obama lead over Clinton largest this year by Mike Dorning
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Barack Obama now has a 10-percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton in a national tracking poll conducted by Gallup, the largest lead he has posted in the poll this year.
Gallup reported Obama now leads among Democrats 52 percent against 42 percent for Hillary Clinton, the third day in a row he has held a statistically significant lead against Clinton in the poll.
The movement in the national poll follows a week in which Clinton was widely lampooned for exaggerated accounts she gave of a visit to Bosnia in which she claimed she ran for cover under sniper fire. After the pilot of her plane and reporters who were on the trip with her disputed the account, she conceded she her account was a "mistake" and chalked the incident up to campaign-trail fatigure. But the exaggeration rapidly became fodder for late-night comics and video spoofs on the Internet.
Allies of Barack Obama, most notably Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), also last week promoted arguments that Clinton now has little chance of winning the Democratic nomination and that a prolonged Democratic primary would damage the eventual nominee.
The tracking poll averages polling over the past three days. Gallup noted Obama's strongest lead was in polling conducted on Saturday, the most recent day included.