There is no question that with the primaries quickly approaching (the holiday season always goes by fast, and the primaries will quickly follow), Clinton has the strong lead in both national and state polls.

I was particularly interested today in a stat that this CNN blurb mentions: Barack Obama trails Hillary Clinton by 30 points among workers who make less than $50,000. I tried to find this particular poll, but only came up with what seems to be a more general poll; when I clicked on the link to view the PDF of the complete poll, it made no mention of breaking down the poll by income. It did show that Clinton's national lead among registered Democrats continues to hold strong at 44 percent to Obama's 25 percent, although her lead dropped a bit from October.

In any event, these stats interest me because the nomination has always been Hillary's to lose in part because of her strong name recognition. Clearly, the other candidates, especially the charming Mr. Obama, have since had time to make headway in that department. However, everyone knows that most voters don't make up their minds about who they will vote for until a week or two before they turn in their ballots; I'm assuming this means they don't pay a great deal of attention to the campaigns before then either.

Does this mean that Clinton's lead is still greatly due to the fact that people know who she is? What about among lower-income democrats? People with lower incomes certainly have enough to think about on a daily basis besides politics-- have they even really considered other candidates yet? Moreover, is that particular stat about lower income workers a reflection of primary voters? Certainly being registered raises your chance of voting in primaries, but are they less likely to vote in the primaries than higher-income Democrats?

There is no question that with the primaries quickly approaching (the holiday season always goes by fast, and the primaries will quickly follow), Clinton has the strong lead in both national and state polls.

I was particularly interested today in a stat that this CNN blurb mentions: Barack Obama trails Hillary Clinton by 30 points among workers who make less than $50,000. I tried to find this particular poll, but only came up with what seems to be a more general poll; when I clicked on the link to view the PDF of the complete poll, it made no mention of breaking down the poll by income. It did show that Clinton's national lead among registered Democrats continues to hold strong at 44 percent to Obama's 25 percent, although her lead dropped a bit from October.

In any event, these stats interest me because the nomination has always been Hillary's to lose in part because of her strong name recognition. Clearly, the other candidates, especially the charming Mr. Obama, have since had time to make headway in that department. However, everyone knows that most voters don't make up their minds about who they will vote for until a week or two before they turn in their ballots; I'm assuming this means they don't pay a great deal of attention to the campaigns before then either.

Does this mean that Clinton's lead is still greatly due to the fact that people know who she is? What about among lower-income democrats? People with lower incomes certainly have enough to think about on a daily basis besides politics-- have they even really considered other candidates yet? Moreover, is that particular stat about lower income workers a reflection of primary voters? Certainly being registered raises your chance of voting in primaries, but are they less likely to vote in the primaries than higher-income Democrats?