Edwards Leads South Carolina, Clark Up in Oklahoma
Mon February 02, 2004 07:09 AM ET
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat John Edwards widened his lead over front-runner John Kerry in South Carolina and Wesley Clark held a slim advantage on Kerry in Oklahoma a day before presidential nominating contests in those states, according to a Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll released Monday.
Kerry, still benefiting from a surge in momentum after wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, held commanding leads in Missouri and Arizona as seven states prepared to cast votes Tuesday in the Democratic race for the right to challenge President Bush.
Edwards, the senator from North Carolina, increased his lead over Kerry from one to five points in the latest three-day tracking poll in South Carolina, a state Edwards says he must win to stay in the race.
Clark gained three points on Kerry in Oklahoma to hold a narrow one-point lead ahead of Tuesday's seven-state test, which could give Kerry a huge boost on his road to the nomination or give new life to Edwards and Clark.
North Dakota, Delaware and New Mexico also hold contests on Tuesday, the biggest day so far in the Democratic presidential race with 269 delegates to the summer nominating convention at stake.
"If Edwards wins in South Carolina and polls strongly enough to win delegates in Missouri and Oklahoma, he has some significant regional strength and can certainly make a case to go on," pollster John Zogby said.
"If Clark wins Oklahoma and comes in a strong second in Arizona, he also can move on -- but it is hard to see where."
One-time front-runner Howard Dean, still trying to recover from crippling losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, trails badly in all four states being polled and is looking beyond Tuesday to contests Saturday in Michigan and Washington state and on Feb. 17 in Wisconsin.
The poll of 600 likely primary voters in each of the four states -- Missouri, Arizona, South Carolina and Oklahoma -- was taken Friday through Sunday and has a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. It will continue Tuesday, the day of the primaries and caucuses.
A tracking poll combines the results of three consecutive nights of polling, then drops the first night's results each time a new night is added. It allows pollsters to record shifts in voter sentiment as they happen.
The poll Monday counted undecideds who were leaning toward a candidate in that candidate's total, but several states still had large pools of undecided voters, including Oklahoma with 12 percent and Missouri with 11 percent.
A look at each state:
MISSOURI - Kerry leads Edwards 50 percent to 15 percent. Dean, the former Vermont governor, is at 9 percent. Clark, the retired general and former NATO commander, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut have 4 percent each, while civil rights activist Al Sharpton has 3 percent and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is at less than 1 percent.
SOUTH CAROLINA - Edwards leads Kerry 30 percent to 25 percent. Dean and Clark are at 10 percent, Sharpton at 7 percent, Lieberman at 6 percent and Kucinich at 1 percent.
ARIZONA - Kerry leads Clark 40 percent to 27 percent, with Dean at 13 percent, Lieberman and Edwards at 6 percent, and Kucinich at 1 percent.
OKLAHOMA - Clark leads Kerry 28 percent to 27 percent, with Edwards at 19 percent, Lieberman 7 percent, Dean at 6 percent, Sharpton and Kucinich at 1 percent.
reuters.com |
