Despite news of superdelegate pickups by Barack Obama and his lead in many national polls, a slim majority (55 percent) of Democratic voters are in favor of both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama staying in the race for the presidential nomination. The Gallup poll was conducted May 8-11. It does show a slight drop in Democratic support for a competitive campaign; last week’s poll ‘ conducted before the primaries in Indiana and North Carolina ‘ showed 60 percent of Democratic voters in favor of the candidates continuing to battle it out. And the percentage of Democratic respondents advocating that Clinton end her campaign has risen 12 percentage points from 23 percent last week to 35 percent this week.

It is clear that Clinton’s supporters want to see her stay in the race, and that Obama’s supporters want Clinton to give up her candidacy. Seventy-five percent of Clinton supporters, but only 39 percent of Obama supporters, want both to continue. And, 60 percent of Obama supporters want the New York senator to drop her bid.

According to today’s poll, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of Clinton’s supporters would like to see Obama choose the New York senator as a running mate, as would 43 percent of Obama’s supporters. More than half of Obama’s supporters polled, though, reject an Obama-Clinton ticket.

For results based on the sample of 537 Democrats or Democratic leaners, the maximum margin of sampling error is ‘5 percentage points.