Status Update on Indiana and NC

I have to admit that my attention's wandering. What a nightmare two months--Ohio, Wright, six-week dead zone, ABC sandbagging, Pennsylvania, Wright. The only good news has been the constant dribble of superdelegates, but this hardly makes up for the constant dirge of bad news. And now it looks like it may cost Obama a shot not only in Indiana, but possibly even North Carolina. (The implications of which would be ... bad.) Well, let's see.

Indiana
There have been relatively few Hoosier polls, for reasons unclear to me. Pollster lists 14 going back to February, but let's throw out everything before Pennsylvania. That leaves seven. Hillary leads in five, Obama two, though the trend is definitely toward Clinton. The current aggregate of those polls is Clinton 48.2%, Obama 43.4%. They're all over the place in terms of undecideds, which makes me suspicious. Since SurveyUSA has done a pretty good job of estimating things, let's use their recent poll as a baseline: 9%.

(Worth noting: the aggregate of the polling done in the two days prior to Pennsylvania showed a 7.5% gap. A strong finish by Hillary? Bad polling? An undetected racist undercurrent? Pick one.)

North Carolina
More bothersome is NC. Four polls were conducted right before Pennsylvania, and they gave Obama a sizeable 15-point lead, 52.5 - 37.5%. In the polls since then, the lead has been cut in half to 49.3 - 41.7%, a lead of 7.6%. Below are some of the intra-pollster trends, with Obama leads in recent polls compared to ones 2-3 weeks ago.

InsiderAdvantage: +15, -2, 17% difference
Rasmussen: +23, +15, 8%
SurveyUSA: +10, +9, +5, 5%
ARG: +11, +10, 1%

The big question will be polling over the weekend and into Monday, because this Wright thing was smack in the middle of the plummeting poll numbers. Upshot: not great.