As Democrats work through their last 10 presidential primaries, which they hope will produce a nominee by June, they have a plethora of polls showing how each of their candidates runs against Republican Sen. John McCain in the major swing states that will decide the election.
Most matchups polls show that Mr. McCain has the edge over front-runner Sen. Barack Obama in some pivotal battleground states that Democrats must carry if they are to win back the White House, while others show Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton leading in several of those key states.
But Democratic officials say head-to-head polls are meaningless this early in the election year and will have little if any influence on how the rest of the primaries turn out.
“I really don’t think that these periodic matchup polls are a factor in the remaining primaries. The party is going to elect their nominee the way it’s supposed to. It’s not a nomination by poll, it’s a nomination by a process of primary contests,” said Allan Katz, a Democratic National Committee member who is also a superdelegate backing Mr. Obama.
Still, some pollsters think the head-to-head polls can to some extent influence voters who are undecided about which candidate stands the best chance of winning in November.
Notably, Mr. McCain was leading Mr. Obama in three pivotal battleground states: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to the latest polling averages tracked by the Real Clear Politics Web site.
While he narrowly led the Illinois senator by just 1.5 percentage points in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania, he held a five-point lead over him in Ohio, and had a decisive eight-point advantage in Florida.
Mrs. Clinton, however, posed somewhat tougher competition for the Arizona Republican, according to the Real Clear Politics tabulation of the latest head-to-head polls in these states.
She was leading Mr. McCain by 3.7 percentage points in Pennsylvania and 2.5 points in Ohio, and trailed him by just three points in Florida. The race in all three states were within the margins of error and thus effectively ties.
While pollsters acknowledged that head-to-head numbers at this early juncture were likely to change, perhaps dramatically, over the course of the next seven months, they showed that at this stage of the campaign Mr. McCain was illustrating surprising strength against either Democrat, despite the bleak political environment for Republicans this year.
Some pollsters say they have changed their mind about the role head-to-head polls can play in the midst of a heated, competitive race.
“I used to say automatically, no, they are not an influence, but I’ve backed off that for a couple of reasons,” said independent pollster John Zogby.
“First, the polls influence the coverage of the campaign. Voters — in particular, undecided voters — get to see, read or hear, or get exposed to which candidate has a better chance of winning,” Mr. Zogby said.
“Second, it’s measurement of a moment in time, so it kind of enters into the mix of the discussion,” he said.
Whatever effect the polls may play, most of the state-by-state poll numbers in the next stage of primaries showed last week that the nominating race between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, with few exceptions, remained close.
The New York senator led Mr. Obama by 6.6 percentage points in Pennsylvania, and by just three points in Indiana, but she trailed him by 12 points in North Carolina, according to the Real Clear Politics averages.
While the Illinois senator leads the former first lady in the total delegate count, with 132 more than she has, a nationwide New York Times/CBS News poll released Friday showed the two of them in a statistical tie among Democratic voters — with 46 percent favoring Mr. Obama and 43 percent backing Mrs. Clinton.
The Gallup Poll, however, had its latest survey showing Mr. Obama with a five percentage point advantage (49 percent to 44 percent) over Mrs. Clinton.
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