The day after a Quinnipiac University poll of Ohio showed several bad signs for Sen. Barack Obama last week, a new poll indicated a much brighter outlook for the Illinois Democrat.

Quinnipiac had Obama losing by 4 points to Sen. John McCain, while SurveyUSA showed Obama beating the Arizona Republican by 9 points.

In stark contrast to the university's survey, the later poll shows Obama winning among both white and male voters. He also comes within 4 points of McCain in crucial southeastern Ohio; Quinnipiac had Obama losing by 20 in that area (although the polls might not be defining the region in the same way).

However, the key to Obama's success in the SurveyUSA poll lies in this demographic: Of the 600 voters, 52 percent are Democrats, 28 percent Republicans and 18 percent independents. Although the poll's methodology is derided by some, it nailed Sen. Hillary Clinton's Ohio primary victory margin on the nose.

The new survey shows that adding John Edwards to the Democratic ticket would help Obama the most; putting Mike Huckabee on the GOP ticket would help McCain the most.

SurveyUSA's push-button telephone poll was taken May 16-18, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. Quinnipiac's more conventional survey using telephone interviews of 1,244 Ohio voters has an error margin of 2.8 points.

-- Darrel Rowland drowland@dispatch.com