Obama wins SC. By double digits but barely so. Edwards is a close enough third to keep him in on Super Tuesday.
Obama then needs a lot of perceived momentum and free publicity buzz over the next 9 days to do more than just stay slightly behind in popular vote and delegate count. I am on record as predicting that Richardson will endorse him right after SC which will get that spotlight on Obama and that Richardson will heavily promote Obama both in the mainstream and in Spanish language media. With those things occurring he and HRC will basically tie on Super Tuesday which will be perceived as an Obama victory given expectations and all and propel him the rest of the way.
If SC is won by Obama by less than 5 points it will be perceived as a victory over expectations for HRC and her 10 pt lead nationally will stay solid. Obama might stay in the race but won’t pick up more ground.
Are you sure about the Spanish language media thing? All the talking heads this Sunday were stressing how tense relations are between blacks and Hispanics.
My only issue is that Obama can keep beating expectations till the cows come home, but when it comes down to it, he simply has to start winning. Unless Edwards drops out right after South Carolina and endorses Obama, I’m of the mind that Hillary pretty much has the nomination in hand.
There is a lot to think about with this race - I think Dseid has some very good points and all hinge on what happens with Obama’s perceived popularity among the media heads. What Liberal said has been carrying weight as well, however, I am campaigning for Obama in Conencticut and the Latino Community love him, and they are gaining a larger voice here in New England of all places. I saw a poll about young latinos mainly equadorians who are registering to vote so they can vote for Obama.
That being said, I hope Obama can stop the Media Frenzy and Billary Blitz…I really hope he can pull it off. He’s got to go for a 3 million dollar ad on Super Bowl Sunday - get those young people out to vote!!!
Lib, that’s exactly why it would be a major plus to do it. The idea is major American politico of Latino heritage (who would likely bring in others who have possibly been waiting for his lead - like Gloria Molino) speaking in Spanish in the Latino media outlets could do a lot to offset some of those tense relations and offset some of HRCs advantage in that demographic. Especially as it would be coming from someone who has worked in the previous Clinton White House. Key in several states especially California.
Ravenman what it comes down to is delegates. Of those won in the primaries (ie discounting the superdelegates who can switch around as they see fit and are there to represent established party interests) he has so far won more. He can even lose the popular vote in states like California and yet still come away with as many or more delegates than she does. If they end up coming out of Super Tuesday nearly tied overall in popular vote and in delegate count won, then those next primaries will be his to lose.
I’m not sure how Edwards being in or out factors in. Does he really pull more from one or the other? I don’t know. Is there any data? In any case if he doesn’t get at least 15% in SC then he is a nonfactor in the delegate count. He won’t break 15% again. (And that’s the minimum to get delegates. And I doubt many would be swayed by who he endorses.
Delegate counts at this point are pretty sketchy, but the latest CNN estimate shows Clinton with a 218 to 127 lead (link. ) There’s about 2,000 delegates up for grabs on Super Tuesday, another 600 to be awarded in February, 500 in March, and 600+ after March. Hillary won’t win the nomination on Super Tuesday, but if Obama doesn’t win a good number of states that day, it’ll be clear to everyone that Clinton has the momentum. Plus, every delegate going for Edwards is really one out of Obama’s corner.
I just don’t see that there’s any chance for this contest to go beyond the third week in February. Clinton has double digit leads in California, New Jersey and New York, and a slight lead in Georgia and Arizona. The only big states I can’t find polls for are Illinois (duh), Massachusetts and Minnesota. I’m just not seeing the math on how Obama can keep the contest going unless Edwards drops out, because if he doesn’t win in the big states, it means he’s going to have to run extremely strong in a geographically diverse set of states in March and after, and there ain’t no candidate in the race today who has enough money to run serious campaigns in that many states.
And the only hope there is that I’m guessing most Edwards voters don’t have Clinton as their second choice: people either like or dislike Hillary, but few people, IMHO, see Hillary as “a good second choice since my guy’s out of the race.”
Finally, there’s the old political axiom about what everyone calls candidates who rely on the young vote to get elected: losers. I don’t say this to be mean: if I had to vote today, odds are that I’d vote for Obama, but relying on the vigor of youth to sweep you to victory is a bad strategy.
This includes so-called “super-delegates” which are not actually bound to support the candidate. They have just pledged to do so. They solid, no-shit, delegate count is 38-36, with Obama ahead (18 to Edwards).
I think Hillary has played the expectation game very well in SC. Even a 10% Obama win, which would be the most lopsided result yet, will get spun as her beating expectations. The only thing that could upset that is if she loses to Edwards (who has a bit of momentum in the polls right now). It’s still rather wide open, but the most likely scenario has her with a 300 delegate lead or so coming out of Feb 5. That might be too much to overcome…
A final point. The CW seems to be that Edwards is hurting Obama, but I’m not sure that is true. While many young, progressives that support Edwards would go to Obama, the lifelong Democrat union voter supporting Edwards probably goes to Clinton. Also, by splitting the white vote to some extent he helps negate the racial aspects of the results (especially in SC).
The problem is, there’s no solid evidence to suggest Edwards is stealing more votes from Obama than from Clinton. Slightly the opposite, according to the L.A. Times poll the other day:
Another point I hadn’t realized until today is the way the 15% threshold rule works could cause Edwards to help Obama significantly in big states like NY and California. Basically, if a candidate doesn’t get to 15% the unassigned delegates are divided evenly between the candidates that do. So, if the results were 50% Clinton, 40% Obama, and 10% Edwards, “his” delegates won’t go to Clinton and Obama proportionally but at a 50/50 split. This would effectively reduce her margin of victory. This link has more details about the process:
Responding to the OP, I’ve got no clue of what will happen between now and the morning of Feb. 6 on the Dem side - especially after having been so wrong on New Hampshire, where it looked, right up until the polls closed, like Obama was going to run away with it.
Sure, I wasn’t the only one who fell into that one, but still: I’ve got no idea whether Obama’s going to win small or big in SC, or get edged out by Hillary. I’ve got no idea whether Edwards can overtake Hillary for second place in SC. I know that Edwards won’t win there, and Obama won’t finish third.
And barring a Clinton win in SC, which I’d have to think would presage a solid win by Clinton on Feb. 5, I have no clue about the multidimensional chess game that is Super Tuesday. So much depends on each campaign’s ability to compete across a wide swath of states. Obama’s spent a lot of money getting an organization in place in most ST states, and I presume Hillary has a ton of money to be spent on ads.
Finally, there’s the nonpolitical calendar, which is quite interesting right around then. Super Sunday serendipitously falls two days before Super Tuesday. And Super Tuesday is also Fat Tuesday, better known as Mardi Gras. Since Louisiana doesn’t have a primary on Feb. 5, I doubt that Mardi Gras will interfere too much with the political action (though it’ll provide a great excuse to get drunk while watching the results trickle in from the various primaries).
But the Super Bowl, with its expensive airtime, will interfere with the last surge of campaigning before the primaries. Even if both Obama and Clinton have raised $100M, Super Bowl commercials at $3M a pop are a bit expensive for them, and who’s going to be watching anything else?
The thing is, it’ll work the other way around in states that Obama wins. And as Ravenman quite rightly said, he can’t win the nomination until he wins some states. Sure, he won’t get numerically blown away, thanks to the Democrats’ proportional allocation of delegates, but that factor will also make a fairly small lead in delegates really, really hard to overcome. It’s not like the GOP with their winner-take-all states and congressional districts.
Any Candidate who doesn’t have an ad during the super bowl will not even be close to winning the presidency…It would be a very good idea to have a funny, non-politiking ad in during the bowl. Something that will stick in peoples minds. Anyone want to tally who puts an ad in and who doesn’t and then start a thread about in November again? It’ll be an impromptu poll…Of course this is all conjecture but it could be fun.
Well NPR was reporting a tightening up of the polls. Which paradoxically is good for Obama in this messed up election world as it lowers the expectation of a blow-out. That said, I stand by my prediction - if he doesn’t win by more than 5 pts then no Richardson endorsement and no way he wins the nom.
Superdelegates are a funky thing. They basically represent the head start an establishment favorite gets right off the bat. They are not voted on or reflective of the vote for the candidates in any direct way. HRC has a 180 to 85 advantage right off based on them. But they can switch at as they see fit “for the good of the party” …
Florida primary is next Tuesday. Even though the delegates won’t count, I think it could be enough of a bellweather to predict the following Tuesday outcome. More momentum should come out of that, since Florida is, electorally speaking, far and away the biggest state prior to Super Tuesday.
I like both candidates (I’m sort of assuming Edwards isn’t going to run away with the nom at this point) enough to be able to sit back and enjoy the spectacle without stomach ulcers. It has played out in a very entertaining manner so far and I’m kinda glued to my seat.
Also, in a mixed spirit of “got no dog in this fight really and fun to watch” + 65% schadenfreude, I’m getting entertainment value from watching the Republican primary battle, too.
Obama will win SC by a big margin but will not equal Jesse Jackson’s win there before. Hillary only has a very small chance to bridge the gap in SC enough to give them the leg room to claim a victory even just over expectations. Even then, Hillary will have a tough time selling it to the MSM because it’s a less exciting narrative than Obama being able to close the gap with her nationally - so Obama will get a boost from SC no matter how small the lead.
Hillary will take Super Tuesday by storm ending with a 300 - 400 delegate count lead.
Re: Richardson’s endorsement: My take is that he will endorse Hillary or else he will not endorse anyone.
Yep, you got me. I was flipping through polls too quickly and misread Georgia.
On the Democratic side, we’re at the seventh inning stretch of game 7 of the World Series. The Obama team is down by two runs. It’s not good enough at this point to say, “Well, Obama HAD been down by four in the fifth inning, so it could get close in the next couple of innings…” The point is that Obama has lasted this far, he’s in the big leagues with a two person race, and he simply has to start winning in places where Hillary has a substantial lead right now. Close isn’t going to cut it anymore, expectations don’t matter anymore. Winning and taking momentum are the only rational goals at this point, everything else is for losers.
Obama’s been running a lot of TV ads here in the DC market. That’s a lot of money to be spending on a post-Super Tuesday race (IIRC, both Maryland and Virginia will have their primaries on the 12th.) The next FEC filings are due on the 31st, so by Super Tuesday will see how much money Clinton and Obama have left. I’m betting those numbers may be telling.
I was going to draw a different analogy, but in trying to construct one, I realized that there’s really no single analogy that quite encompasses the complexities of a primary campaign. I was thinking about the baseball season rather than a game, and as far as delegates go, we’re barely out of the preseason here, even after SC: the likelihood that the race will be decided by the delegates won or lost in IA, NH, NV, and SC is negligible - these primaries really are primarily about show, convincing people in the ‘real’ states of Feb. 5 and beyond that you’re viable, that you’re worth voting for. Edwards’ Presidential hopes are all but dead, not because he’s irretrievably behind in the delegate count, but because he’s a mile or two behind in convincing people that there’s a point in voting for him.
We may be in the second week in April with respect to delegates (and on Feb. 5, we’ll play the rest of April, plus May, June, July, and a smidgen of August), but in terms of the psychology of the race, SC is the last half of July.
Anyway, all this is to say that in SC, impressions still matter. Winning big v. winning small will be important. If Edwards manages to edge out Clinton for second despite being mostly dead, that’ll have a significant effect on how people see her candidacy, even though its effect on delegates may be in the ‘count them on one hand’ range.
Once we’re into Feb. 5 and beyond, though, I agree with you completely: it’ll be strictly about winning and piling up delegates.
The picture will be a lot clearer after tonight.
Is this season crack for political junkies, or what?
That’s what I get for never watching TV, except for football (and I was out of town last weekend). I had no idea that Obama had been putting ads up locally. (BTW, DC’s primary is on 2/12 in addition to MD and VA, so the whole metro area will be going to the polls at once. That’ll certainly maximize the effectiveness of broadcast ads in the D.C. market.)
Indeed. Clinton’s relied more heavily than Obama on bigger contributors, people who gave her the max $2300 each for both her primary and general election campaigns early on. It’ll be interesting to see if she can move beyond that, either in finding a lot more big donors, or in doing better with the grassroots.
Meanwhile, I expect Obama’s fundraising machine is still doing more or less what it’s been doing, due to much more reliance on smaller donors that (a) you can find more of, and (b) can be hit up for repeat contributions.
If the Clinton campaign exits Super Tuesday without a whole lot of money in the bank, and Obama has kept it close enough through Feb. 6 that a string of later wins can put him ahead, the difference in fundraising strategies may enable him to get those wins.