WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama has won over more than half of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s former supporters, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll that finds party loyalty trumping hard feelings less than three weeks after their bruising Democratic presidential contest ended.
The poll suggests time is beginning to heal some rifts from the primary campaign and that the New York senator’s endorsement of Obama carried weight. The poll was taken in the days after Clinton suspended her campaign and said she was supporting her rival.
Obama’s progress with Clinton supporters is marked, yet far from complete. More than one in five who had backed the New York senator now plans to support Republican Sen. John McCain in the fall, a boost for McCain if those opinions hold.
“We still have work to do,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters in a strategy briefing. “Democrats are consolidating behind the nominee as the choice in the election is more clear and as the contest fades. Time is our friend here.”
Obama’s outreach to Clinton supporters picks up this week. Clinton introduced Obama to her financial backers Thursday night in Washington, and the two will campaign together for the first time today in New Hampshire.
“I want her campaigning as much as she can,” Obama said Wednesday. “She was a terrific campaigner. She, I think, inspired millions of people, and so she can be an extraordinarily effective surrogate for me and the values and ideals we share as Democrats.”
The Obama campaign also has encouraged supporters to hold “United for Change” house meetings with supporters of Clinton and other candidates Saturday. The campaign says more than 3,000 are being planned across all 50 states.
The AP-Yahoo News poll, conducted by Knowledge Networks, is part of an ongoing study that tracks the attitudes and opinions of a scientifically selected group of more than 2,000 Americans to see how their political views evolve over the course of the campaign.
The poll found 53 percent of the Democrats who favored Clinton for the nomination two months ago now back Obama for president. That’s an improvement from April, when only 40 percent of Clinton supporters said they would back Obama over McCain.
“It wasn’t a difficult decision — I was a lifelong Democrat,” said 55-year-old Susan Gates of Massachusetts, a former Clinton backer now in Obama’s camp.
Gregory Scheetz, 56, of Barstow, Calif., said he wanted Clinton to win because of her experience, her intelligence and because it’s time to have a woman in the White House. But he said he moved to Obama after Clinton endorsed him June 7, even though he’s a registered Republican.
“I feel that he can bring change,” he said. “There’s people in our country that I see need help. They’re slow about getting it, and it just seems that Republicans are taking a different direction.”
Twenty-three percent of Clinton’s backers picked McCain over Obama. Of the rest, 16 percent were undecided, 5 percent were for independent candidate Ralph Nader and 3 percent said someone else.
The poll suggests the Clinton supporters are wary that he has enough experience to be president. Just 25 percent describe him as experienced, and that drops to 5 percent among those former Clinton backers who are not supporting Obama.
The poll responses show Obama has more work to do to quell fears among voters like Kirstie Hartle of Rome, N.Y., a registered Democrat who has never supported a Republican presidential candidate. With Clinton out of the race, Hartle said, “I’m Republican all the way now.”
She said she doesn’t like Obama’s name and thinks he has a questionable background. She also said she thought Obama was deceitful when he broke from his church after it hurt his campaign, and she doesn’t trust him to handle the Iraq war.
“It sounds to me like a Middle Eastern type of name and whether or not he’s born here in the United States, he doesn’t seem like, to me, somebody who is trustworthy,” Hartle said. “You can’t trust anybody these days, so who’s to say he’s not a terrorist and we just don’t realize it yet?”
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