Barack Obama has taken A Great Leap Forward in North Carolina by opening up a 55 percent to 34 percent lead over Hillary Clinton, according to Public Policy Polling which conducted its survey on March 24. The margin of error is 3.8 percent. This is a startling rebound from PPP’s March 17 poll when Clinton had closed to within a point of Obama in the battle for this state’s 134 delegates. Dean Debnam of PPP attributed Obama’s surge to his recent visit to the state and “openly taking on some of the controversies swirling around his campaign.”

The poll found that if former candidate John Edwards decided to endorse Clinton that it would make no difference to 57 percent of voters. Thirty-one percent said it would make them less likely to vote for Clinton and only 12 percent said it would make them more likely to support her. Obama has leads in the 20 point range among both men and women.

Forty-seven percent named the economy and jobs as the top campaign issue followed by 26 percent who cited Iraq. White voters, who made up 59 percent of the sample, favored Clinton by 47 percent to 40 percent while black voters, comprising 34 percent of the sample, supported Obama by 80 percent to 14 percent.