Is Hillary Clinton Winning The General Election?

In matchups in the general election for President against the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, it is quite true that Hillary Clinton does better than Barack Obama. However, this lead that Hillary has is almost entirely due to an unfortunate side-effect of the Democratic National Committee's decision to expel Florida and Michigan from the primary process after they decided (with warning not to do so, and explanation of the consequences) to move their own primaries to the head of the line on the primary schedule.

Hillary made the calculated move (and I can't disagree with her... especially looking at the results) to "embrace" the Democratic voters of Florida and Michigan in their purgatorial situation. She made small (although possibly rule-bending/breaking) campaign overtures to the voters there, effectively saying, "I'm with you."

When the February 5th "Super Tuesday" primaries, and the February 12th primaries in particular went disastrously wrong for Hillary Clinton's campaign for the Presidential nomination, she went from "small overtures" to the people of Florida and Michigan over to a full-blown campaign to reverse the DNC's decision after the fact, and get the Florida and Michigan votes included... however incorrect and unfair (see post above) though the vote counts may be.

This of course made Hillary, by dint of her advocacy, the official candidate of all citizens of Florida and Michigan. (Even McCain isn't standing up for these people.) Barack Obama, as Hillary's direct competitor — and also perceived as a direct inhibitor to the people of Florida and Michigan having their votes counted — is perceived as "the bad guy" in all of this.

As you can see here versus here, currently both Obama and Clinton would beat McCain in the general election (this was not the case a week ago, when polls showed that Obama would have lost the election to McCain while Hillary would have won) but Hillary would win by a larger margin because she would win Florida, while Obama would lose it. It is hard to say whether the Florida pro-Hillary anti-Obama attitude will change once Hillary exits the election process, or whether Obama will overall improve his standing in the polls.

However, if the election were held today, based on the polls as they now stand, both Hillary and Obama would beat John McCain. When you hear Hillary and her supporters say that Hillary does better than Obama in the general election, this is what they mean. It's true, but it is not (currently) decisive to the outcome of the election.