A new poll by Associated Press-Yahoo news found Sen. Barack Obama more likely to beat Sen. John McCain in the general election than Sen. Hillary Clinton. The Poll has been collecting data since November 2007. In November, Clinton had a 63 percent chance of beating McCain compared with Obama’s 14 percent.

Clinton’s lead steadily declined over the last several months and April marked the first month where Obama passed Hillary by a 13 percent margin.

The analysis explains as Americans learned more about the once unknown Illinois senator, his supporters have grown. Clinton, widely known since the early 1990’s has been struggling with changing the minds of those who have been skeptical of her campaign since the beginning.

Since January, Clinton’s ratings in the honesty, likeability, and ethics categories have decreased whereas Obama’s ratings increased.

Obama may owe this to his winning streak in the primaries. Clinton still held the lead as the stronger nominee with 56 percent of Democrats — ahead of Obama’s 33 percent.

However, voters note Obama does have his flaws. Since the fall, the category rating him as “not at all honest” jumped nine percent. This jump coincided with his connection to his former pastor who has been criticized for anti-white remarks.




The poll was conducted with more than 1,800 randomly selected adults whose opinions are rechecked every few months.