It was suspected by many that Public Policy Polling's results in North Carolina on March 24th (the first NC poll after Wright) represented an outlier. Obama's lead, which was previously 44-43, had increased dramatically to 55-34, a simply massive swing.
However, a poll released yesterday by PPP has confirmed their previous results, which have been further verified by ARG (for what they're worth: O51-C38) and Insider Advantage (O49-C34). The topsheet results came in at Obama 54, Clinton 36.
What makes these results even more significant is that PPP (guessing that their last poll was an outlier, IMHO) dramatically increased the population for their follow up poll. The 44-43 results had 521 likely voters, the 55-34 results had 673 likely voters, and the most recent had a whopping 1100 likely voters. That reduced the often-overlooked margin of error from +/- 4.3% in the first poll to +/- 3.0% in the most recent poll.
A few other notable points:
The third confirming poll from PPP shows Obama doing well across all age demographics, and actually improving his position among voters 18-29 and voters 65+. His appeal is truly cross-generational.
While losing 4 points off of his 40% support from whites in the second poll, he's still getting 36% of white voters overall, a 6% bump from the initial 44-43 poll.
On the issues, Hillary is doing a lot worse across the board:
For education voters, Obama's lead went from 17 to 55.
For economy and jobs, Obama virtually maintained his 19 point lead.
For taxes, Obama's deficit went from 54 to 3.
While declining marginally on Iraq and healthcare, it seems clear that Obama has tremendous strength in North Carolina on all of the critical issues in 2008, including the bread and butter ones that seem to be increasingly important politically. This portends favorably for him in both Pennsylvania, where Rasmussen showed a narrowing of Hillary's lead to 5, and in all the other states to follow. His message is clearly resonating, and we could see a really big delegate victory in North Carolina as the polls continue to verify one another and demonstrate his double digit strength, and HRC's inability to escape the mid-30s.