Hillary Clinton continues to hold the line as the front-runner in Pennsylvania, with Barack Obama six points back one week before the April 22 Democratic primary vote.

Clinton had 50 percent to Obama’s 44 percent, according to the Quinnipiac University poll out Tuesday. The numbers remain unchanged from one week earlier, before the uproar over Obama’s remark that people in small towns like those in Pennsylvania cling to guns and religion to vent their frustration over the economy and Washington’s false promises.

The poll was taken April 9-13. Obama’s remarks from the April 6 San Francisco fundraiser were first reported on April 11.

According to the poll, support for Obama among the state’s black voters surged to 86 percent, compared with 75 percent a week ago, while Clinton maintained her advantage among whites, 57 percent to Obama’s 37 percent. Twenty-six percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic nominee, while 19 percent of Obama’s backers said they would support McCain if Clinton is the nominee.

The poll of 2,103 likely Democratic voters in Pennsylvania had a margin of error of 2.1 percent.

While Obama’s remarks have dominated the news for three days, several Democratic officials are trying to put the issue behind them. Freshman Sen. Bob Casey, an Obama supporter, praises Obama in a new ad, calling him an agent of change and saying he believes in him.Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter, reportedly said Monday night that the remarks could cost Obama “one or two points in the Keystone State primary, but will be long forgotten by November.

Scott Rasmussen, head of Rasmussen Reports, said his firm’s recent polling numbers also show a race much unchanged, though 56 percent of voters said they disagree with Obama’s comments. His daily tracking poll out Tuesday showed Clinton with 50 percent, Obama with 41 percent in Pennsylvania.

“When you ask Democrats about this, guess what? Barack Obama reporters say they agree with this. Hillary Clinton supporters don’t. … This does not fundamentally reshape the Democratic race at all,” he said. “All the data we have to date in Pennsylvania and nationally says if there is a problem for Barack Obama and his comments it is going to come in the general election, assuming he gets the nomination.”

Still, the Democratic candidates continue to try to take advantage of the brouhaha. The Clinton campaign has made a “substantial” buy to run a television ad featuring reactions from Clinton supporters in Pennsylvania to the statements.

She has argued that tapping into people’s bitterness isn’t a solution to America’s problems.

“The drafters of the Constitution could have decided that King George was really a bad guy and they were going to just be upset about it. They were going to just be angry and all whipped up about it. You could have gotten a a little bitter about the way you were treated from across the Atlantic Ocean. But that’s not what happened. What happened is that a lot of folks said, wait a minute, we can do better,” Clinton said at a Philadelphia event late Monday.

Obama’s camp responded to the Clinton ad with a statement saying that it proves “once again that she’ll say or do anything to get elected.

“Hillary Clinton may think that Pennsylvanians aren’t angry or frustrated with their leaders in Washington, but the working Americans Barack Obama has met are tired of politicians who spend all their time running desperate attack ads instead of talking about how they plan to bring back jobs, keep people in their homes, and make health care affordable,” said Obama for America Pennsylvania spokesman Sean Smith.

While the campaign has issued a fundraising letter around the latest dispute, Obama himself has managed to incorporate it into his standard stump speech, telling Philadelphia voters on Monday night that “people really are angry, they really are fed up. Some of them are really bitter, because Washington has forgotten them.”

“You know, I talk about hope a lot in this campaign. Hope is not blind optimism. Hope is not ignorance about how hard it is to change things. In fact, sometimes, hope and anger go hand in hand. You’ve got to get angry about your circumstances to want to bring about change, but you’ve got to have hope to believe that change can happen,” he said.

The remarks are likely to re-emerge once again as candidates debate in Philadelphia on Wednesday night.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Pennsylvania, Top Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.