The difference is that the Republican hate and defamy machine has been hammering away at Clinton for a couple years now, whereas their character assassination infrastructure is just now coming online to attack Obama. So a lot of moderates who have already decided that they hate Clinton for whatever reason don't have the same antipathy for Obama yet.
Furthermore, Obama's strong position against divisive attack politics is more and more validated the stronger the attacks leveled against him are. Even though he might have more points of exposure, he's more prepared to deflect personal attacks and his defenses aren't worn down coming into the race like Clinton's are.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
