New Poll: Obama-Clinton ticket does not help Obama against McCain (Investor Business Daily Poll)

I read another diary which referred me to a recent national general election poll conducted by Investor Business Daily.  It was quite a find, because the poll is the first one I've seen that has polled Obama against McCain with Clinton as Obama's VP.  

In the IBD poll, the Obama v. McCain match-up without vps has Obama beating McCain by 11 points, 48-37, with 15 percent undecided.  The pollster then matched up an Obama/Clinton ticket against McCain with 3 different VP candidates: Condi Rice, Mitt Romney, and Pawlenty.  

Hillary Clinton has been arguing that she is the best qualified vice president because she would be the best person to unify the democratic party and to draw white working class voters.  If so, you'd expect that the addition of Clinton alongside Obama would boost his numbers against McCain.  The results of the polling, however, doesn't seem to suggest adding Clinton to the ticket would have any dramatic effect in boosting Obama's candidacy against McCain.  Results after the fold.

Poll - McCain/VP v. Obama/Clinton  To find the IBD poll, you have to scroll about half way down the screen.

The poll was taken from interviews conducted from May 12-18.

Match-up with no VP

Obama 48
McCain 37
Undecided 15
+11 points

 

Obama/Clinton v. McCain/Condi Rice

Obama/Clinton 47
McCain/Rice 40
Undecided 13  
+7 points

Obama/Clinton v. McCain/Romney

Obama/Clinton 49
McCain/Romney 39
Undecided     12
+10 points

 

Obama/Clinton v. McCain/Pawlenty

Obama/Clinton 49
McCain/Pawlenty 37
Undecided 14
+12 points

The presence of Clinton on the ticket doesn't really seem to provide any meaningful boost for Obama.  It's too bad that IBD didn't pair Obama with other VP candidates such as Edwards or Clark.  Then we could have seen which VP candidate fared better than the other.  

Still, the results are pretty interesting.  I would have expected a bigger shift in the numbers when Clinton was added to the ticket, but it really didn't seem to make much of a difference.  

While this is just one poll, it's the only evidence we have so far of whether Clinton would have any significant impact, positive or negative, for Obama.  And the data suggests that adding to Clinton to the ticket may not have the effect that HRC supporters seem to believe it would have.