Bill C said that unless she takes Ohio *and* Texas, she’s out. The Clinton camp have since lowed this threshold.

She’s shocked us before, but I don’t think Texas will be decisive – maybe with Obama sneaking ahead. She should – according to polls – take Ohio.

AP

Obama has taken Vermont.

Yeah, no surprise there. Do you know when the polls will close?

9pm ET according to CNN

between 7 and 9, eastern. (via. Cell)

Looks like Clinton will win Ohio according to the exit polls, though I find it hard to believe she’d win by more than 4%.

Obama’s win in Vermont should be pretty much nullified by Rhode Island so we can ignore those. If Clinton wins Ohio by 4% and even manages a shock win of up to 10% in Texas then she will still only claw back 20 or so delegates leaving her with the challenge of needing to take at least 75% of Pennsylvania’s vote just to draw level. That would then be undone partially by North Carolina…and this isn’t even looking at the above arguments of pocket super delegates, campaign funding and general momentum.

Quite literally, as far as I’m concerned, I think we can all agree that unless she manages to shock and win Ohio and Texas by 10% or more each her chances of actually making it past North Carolina is slim at best. People are saying that if she wins Ohio or Texas, or both, by any margin it shows that she’s got a chance… I don’t understand how a candidate that was more than 20% up in both states up until a month ago and now is scrapping to just win by a few percent can ever take a real victory from such a situation.

Texas primary results are coming in

OK so the Texas exit poll suggests a decent victory for Clinton. Will be interesting to see how representative these polls end up being.

According to the NY Times site, Obama is slightly ahead on the results coming in for Texas…

More good news:

Voting officials in all four states marveled at the Democratic turnout. “Best I can tell it’s a tsunami of voters,” said Gerry Birnberg, chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party, which encompasses Houston and its environs. At some polling sites there, as many as 100 voters lined up before the polls opened at 7 a.m., Mr. Birnberg said.

An estimated 3.3 million Texans, a primary record, are expected to cast their ballots by the end of the day, according to state election officials. About 1.2 million Texans in the state’s 15 most populous counties already took part in early voting, four times the previous high set in 2000. The large numbers could slow the reporting of results.

Balls, Ohio is called for Clinton.

BBC calls Texas for Clinton. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7276305.stm

Rumours of Clinton’s demise proved premature.

xD.

Hillary can still win. There is a plausible scenario where she regains momentum then has the authority to convince the super-delegates to back her in Denver. The numbers and analysis are at:

http://www.e8voice.blogspot.com

My conclusion is that of course Hillary shouldn’t quit while she still has a chance of the nomination. But it’s not good news for the Democrats’ chances in November. Not good news at all.

Well, she did it. Ohio *and* Texas. Ohio was impressive, but the win in Texas was too close to be decisive, and anyway, Obama is still very much in Pole Position.

This has proven very very worrying for the Democrats.

This was the first big vote in which Barak has been the leading candidate rather than underdog. As such it has been the first in which his policies or lack there of have drawn real attention and scrutiny.

And he lost despite starting well up in the polls.

That’s got to be a worrying situation for a party that may yet need this man to overcome a centrist republican in the full and aggressive spotlight of a Presidential election.

Ohio’s result was a better one that predicted, though to be honest isn’t surprising. We’ll see where Texas ultimately lies…but my above point still stands. Clinton is out of this race whether she knows it or not, the maths just aren’t with her. She can argue as much as she likes about super delegates and how they should re-run Michigan and Florida primaries (which would be political suicide for the Democrats to my mind), she can’t win on pledged delegates alone (nor can Obama really) and she is sliding in the opinion polls. Who in their right mind as an informed super delegate that hasn’t already pledged to her going to say that a less popular candidate with less pledged delegates and less popularity vs McCain is the right choice for the party in this race?

Margin4Error: Unfortunately the media vernacular is spreading wide and fast it seems. I challenge anyone to explain to me how Obama cutting down the lead that Clinton had in two states traditionally hers for the taking by 20 -30 points is a loss? The delegate situation looks like it’ll be pretty much the same, Clinton’s ratings are still sliding, how is this anything other than a score draw?

This is the same sort of thing that people said after New Hampshire, completely ignoring the ground Obama made in areas traditionally not his to win.

Lee

in what way was texas hers for the taking? Its hardly new york. I don’t grasp what makes you think losing texas by a small ammount – given he was well up in the polls previously – counts as a success.

The fact is he had high hopes for winning at least one of ohio and texas and he failed to do so.

If thats a result of him facing a harsher scrutiny as a front runner rather than alternative candidate then that’s got to be worrying for the democrats.

Scrutiny will only grow in the presidential race.

I’m not saying Obama had success here, I’m saying that it was a draw, but that Obama has overturned a 20+ point lead for Clinton in to a marginal victory for her. Texas polling on average was only ever in Obama’s favour by 1% aside from one week, I’d hardly say he was “well up”.

Through the scrutiny of him as a front runner he has weathered the polls, brought his margin up in these states that were not going to vote for him until within the last month in nearly enough numbers, and has generally proved to be as adept as Clinton when it comes to dealing with the scrutiny (see the exit polls that show a very similar outcome for both candidates on performance in debates swaying opinion).

Some things need to be accepted as pretty much given, certain states are unlikely to change hands, Florida, California and Texas being some key ones there. What about the battleground states? Obama does as well if not better in most currently republican swing states than Clinton except, obviously, the Ohio and Pennsylvania states (both obviously more important than the rest) where they are fairly close but Clinton currently edges it. From this alone I can understand what is being said, but when you look at the states that the Dems are defending Clinton is more likely to lose them to the republicans.

What use to the democrats is winning back Ohio with their 20 votes if Clinton then goes and loses that many votes in swing states currently democrat controlled?

Democrats, and the wider world through the media, need to wake up these trends. The democrats aren’t going to win by making key victories in big states while ignoring swathes of the smaller ones, they need to shore up their wins from 2004 and build on them. The democrats need to overturn a simple 35 college votes, Obama has a good chance of winning at least 3/4s of those while losing almost nothing, Clinton has a better chance at winning more votes through less states yet also manages to look like she could easily lose just as many as she gains to the republicans in other key states.

Obviously this could all change, and Clinton could get a boost by winning but out of all the scrutiny it is SHE that has lost the most ground and so she, I believe, that would have the greatest threat of public opinion turning against her further in a general election. She may be able to get more support from Obama helping her, though it’s already shown that he has more power to get funding as the front runner, and ignores that where Obama is weak he could also be helped greatly through Clinton’s support to that argument goes both ways.

lee

I again question some of your thinking – for example about those states held in 2004.

In 2004 the republicans won the presidency with the biggest mandate in history and a massive massive margin of victory.

If the democrats are so weak still that the few states they held remain at risk then they might as well go home now. But we know that’s not the case. They will almost certainly hold states they won in 2004 under either candidate.

–

More important though – read http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/articles/decision-analyst-obama-texas-ohio-mccain-022308005.html

this suggests that two weeks before people voted, Obama was 14% up in texas and 8 percent up in Ohio

That being the case I return to my original point.

Is it not a worry for democrats that once put under the glare of the sort of serious scrutiny a front runner can expect – his support and vote fell dramatically.

Does that not suggest that under longer term serious scrutiny, he is unlikely to carry the level of support that he has so far in the primaries?

—

And is that not a worry for the democrats.

I should add – I now fully expect McCain to be the next president anyway.

But that’s largely because in the last four decades few major parties have been so consistently impressive at throwing away opportunities to win elections as the Democrats in the USA.

Am I missing something here? 2004 was one of the closest Presidential elections in memory. Perhaps only 2000 and 1960 were closer. Bush won by about 1% with only Ohio separating Bush from defeat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_2004

More broadly, I don’t think we can start to judge how individual states will go on the basis of primary votes. The only thing that can legitimately be argued is that Obama is having success in motivating the youth, African-American (both of which can suffer from low turnouts), and independent votes. Clinton is succeeding in motivating the Latino vote (we dont know which Latinos though on the basis of the information that we currently have- are they Latinos who have have voted solidly Democrat previously or switchers?)

But I fear that the next few weeks will be not be a case of all publicity is good publicity from the Democrats’ perspective going on the evidence of the last few days.

“If the democrats are so weak still that the few states they held remain at risk then they might as well go home now. But we know that’s not the case. They will almost certainly hold states they won in 2004 under either candidate.”

Take a look at the data on realclearpolitics, it’s extensive and interesting. I am going to preface what I say next with the fact polls are young and the general election hasn’t even started so it must be taken with a pinch of salt…but here goes.

Democrats are not weak, by any means, and neither are the republicans strong. I don’t understand where you get this idea that in 2004 America voted with a huge mandate to elect Bush again. It was a less close race than when Gore was running with less controversy, but the amount of votes they ended up ahead was 35. This is the equivalent, almost, to Texas. The reality is that while Texas won a lot of geographically large states, they are also generally small influence states.

But the facts are these, recent polls show that Obama competes better against McCain in general, but more specifically competes better against him in more states where it counts. Clinton is certainly no damp squib, and I don’t wish to make out I support Obama more than Clinton in a sense that Clinton would be a bad candidate, they are both good in their own respective ways, she out performs Obama in certain states against McCain but the occurrences of her doing this are the minority of all cases.

The facts are that in democratic swing states McCain at best creates a close race against Obama in the state wide head-to-head polls, while he actually takes 5%+ leads when compared to Clinton. Clinton does perform well in states that have large votes, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, but so does Obama as you rightly say.

The key here is that Obama actually beats McCain in republican states, and while that alone won’t win him a presidency, the fact he also has more chance of holding on to the states he already has vs McCain gives him the greater chance.

The polling data is there, and as I said it may and probably will change, but right now the people are saying in some key states that electing Clinton over Obama is the handing of swing states to Republicans while voting Obama over Clinton is taking swing states from them instead.