Two dueling national polls released Friday showed sharply conflicting political landscapes in the Democratic race, as the candidates charge headfirst into the critical Pennsylvania primary Tuesday.

In the wake of a rocky and caustic debate Wednesday night where Barack Obama was often on the defensive, one poll showed Hillary Clinton closing Obama’s lead to a hair’s width. Another released shortly afterward gave Obama his largest ever lead of the campaign.

The latter, a Newsweek poll conducted Wednesday and Thursday of 588 registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, showed Obama with a 19-point lead — 54 percent over Clinton’s 35 percent. The margin of error was 5 percent.

Since becoming the Democratic front-runner, Obama has never enjoyed such a wide advantage. He’s recently been averaging about a 9-point lead, according to RealClearPolitics.com. The Newsweek poll found Clinton was suffering from a trust gap with voters.

Just 41 percent found Clinton trustworthy and honest, compared with 61 percent for Obama and John McCain. That result suggests Obama’s recent gaffes and misstatements, which were hammered at the Philadelphia debate, pale in comparison to Clinton’s.

But the impact of the debate won’t be apparent until the Tuesday primary. A Gallup daily tracking poll, taken from Tuesday to Thursday, showed Clinton catching up in the post-debate wake, suggesting Obama’s performance hurt him.

The poll showed Obama with just a three-point national advantage over Clinton, 47 percent to 44 percent. A few days ago, Obama had an 11-point lead in the same poll.

The poll surveyed 1,231 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters and had a margin of error of three points.

In Pennsylvania, Clinton still leads, but Obama has narrowed that margin to single digits. One of Clinton’s supporters, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, said Friday that Clinton needs a big win in Pennsylvania if she hopes to overtake Obama, saying a loss in the Keystone State would be “pretty much a door-closer.”

Both candidates pushed into each other’s strongholds Friday as the long Pennsylvania primary race entered its final weekend, with both trying to pick off every vote they can get.

Obama shook hands at a bolt factory and beer bottling company in Erie, the type of white, working class, economically depressed area that has supported the former first lady. Clinton campaigned for Hispanics in Philadelphia, a largely black city expected to go for Obama, before heading out to the more competitive suburbs.

Clinton also got a boost Friday with three new superdelegates. First was Ohio Rep. Betty Sutton. Then Jim Florio and Brendan Byrne, both former New Jersey governors, followed suit. Both ex-governors had been long-time Clinton supporters, but were just named as add-on superdelegates by their state Friday.

Meanwhile, the two Democratic candidates are arguing about who has weathered the most criticism over the course of the campaign.

Clinton said Friday that if Obama thinks the last debate was tough, he might not be ready for the big leagues.

“I’m with Harry Truman on this — if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” she told voters while campaigning in Pennsylvania. “Just speaking for myself, I am very comfortable in the kitchen.”

Her campaign already has claimed Obama was trying to cover up an “awful performance” by saying he was picked on with petty political questions.

Clinton said that getting tough questions is part of what happens in a debate and campaign. “Having been in the White House for eight years and seeing what happens in terms of the pressures and the stresses on a president, that was nothing,” she said.

Bill Clinton weighed in Thursday, suggesting Obama needs to grow a thicker skin.

“Well, they’ve been beating up on her for 15 months. I didn’t hear her whining when he said she was untruthful in Iowa,” he said. “And, you know, they said some pretty rough things about me, too. But, you know, this is a contact sport. If you don’t want to play, keep your uniform off.”

Many of the toughest questions of the debate were targeted at Obama, and he’s said too much time was spent on political divisions instead of issues that matter to Americans.

He was asked about his relationship with controversial pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., about his comments in California that small-town voters “cling” to religion and guns out of bitterness and about his tendency not to wear a flag pin.

But it wasn’t so long ago that Clinton was the front-runner and complaining about her treatment in debates. After a debate last fall, her campaign compiled clips of her being targeted and called it the “Politics of Pile-On.” In late February, Clinton complained that she always got asked the first question.

“Her blatant hypocrisy here is stunning,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded.

The most recent debate Wednesday night was the most watched of this election cycle and has generated some negative reviews for ABC. Obama supporters have made some of the loudest objections, and the Obama campaign sent out a fundraising appeal off the debate titled “Gotcha.”

Obama said Thursday that the moderators “like stirring up controversy and they like playing gotcha games, getting us to attack each other.”

Obama leads Clinton in overall delegates, 1,645 to 1,505, but neither is close to achieving the 2,025 needed to win the nomination.

FOX News’ Aaron Bruns and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Top Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.