Ohio was good for her, better than could be expected…but Texas still isn’t over despite her being projected winner. She is likely to take a whopping 3-4 delegates more than Obama from the primaries, if Obama ends up winning the caucuses by 6% or more he’s technically won the state on delegates. Currently he stands at 4% so it’ll be interesting to see what happens. This of course has happened before where he technically won on delegates but Clinton used it as a victory anyway.

All I can say is that I hope you are right about the narrative. The last thing the dem’s now need is confusion that takes this race all the way to convention.

She’s more a survivor than a comeback girl. As Lee pointed out elsewhere, she managed to scrape through in Texas after double digit leads only months ago.

But you know what, I have new found respect for Clinton’s tenacity and perseverance. The woman stays strong in the face of so much pressure and she managed to keep going. That is some serious stamina.

Saying that though, I’m not sure I buy the narrartive that the media has been fawning over Obama. He just doesn’t have the baggage of other candidates, hence the relatively little scrutiny. She on the other hand has been slamming him on issues that SHE made a mistake on! Like NAFTA, the Iraq war etc… she’s been taking potshots at him despite being wrong from day one. She’s a good politician, I’ll give her that.

I don’t know much about american politics or polls but where is this “she’s was well ahead in the polls a montha ago” come from?

more to my point – how does it relate to Obama being 14% ahead in the polls 14 days before the vote in Texas? (And 8 percent in Ohio).

http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/articles/decision-analyst-obama-texas-ohio-mccain-022308005.html (this was the first one that came up on google when I searched a few minutes ago).

Pehaps I’m missing something here – but lee has said several times Obama overturned a lead that a first search on google suggests was in fact a massive lead that he blew.

help me out people.

Margin: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/tx/texas_democratic_primary-312.html

It’s a similar picture in Ohio though in Ohio he never overtook Clinton.

Four things matter (in this order):

i) Delegates
ii) Momentum
iii) Head to head polls with McCain
iv) Popular vote

What the polls said yesterday, a week ago, in 1923 is neither here nor there. On all these counts, Clinton had a good night but not good enough to bend the arc away from an Obama victory.

Love the Tracey Flick analogy. Think the dumb but pleasant Quarterback analogy does Obama a disservice though……!

Does anyone know who Matthew Broderick is endorsing?

http://www.e8voice.blogspot.com

Lee

That makes an interesting read – though I’m inevitably going to ask how it reads so differently to the Bebo poll in the link i posted. Is thare any reason? (again, I don’t know much about american politics)

More interesting though – do we know why Obama seemed to fall back in the days shortly before the vote?

Clinton will of course emphasise that deep down people trust her more than obama and put it down to him crumbling under greater scrutiny.

What’s his take on it?

e8voice

popular votes surely matters little when things are this close – unless super delegates decide to endorce the national vote and vote with it. Or have I misunderstood this? Do they tend to do that anyway?

and head to head polls with mccain don’t matter much as such polls are innevitably weak under hypothetical conditions. In any country comparisons between unchosen candidates are always weak and can change dramatically and quickly once candidates are known. That is escpecially so where an outsider has won (and in obama and maccain we have two outsiders from their two races).

On top of that – surely understanding why people vote the way they do matters.

Understanding votes may not impact on the result – but it helps us learn about politics and know more for future contests.

So why was it people turned back towards hillary towards the final days? Is it not valuable to know that? If it results from a weakness in the Obama camp does it not seem worthwhile knowing that weakness so as to plan to overcome it in a presidential election?

It’s a good question. Actually trust is part of it. In putting together an article for Tribune this week I spoke to a number of people in Texas, particularly connected with the Latino community. There is a strong bed-rock of trust for the Clintons in that community.

But that wouldn’t explain why late breakers go for Hillary. I would love to see some analysis of who the late breakers are. It may be that they are disproportionately Hillary’s demographic and that is why. It may be no more complex than that. Or it may be that Hillary with more limited resources is focusing her attack, particularly on TV and radio, in the the last coupleof days and so it is fresh and winning over new voters- the red phone ad was clearly effective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kddX7LqgCvc

There could be other reasons. But when you are starting from a base of nothing which Obama is doing in nearly all these contests it is mighty difficult to get over the brow of the hill when your opponent has a bedrock of support. So he’s doing amazingly well.

http://www.e8voice.blogspot.com

The answer regarding the polls would be somewhere found in the actions of February 27th and surrounding immediately that date. It was then that something happened that brought Clinton some voters back in both states simultaneously. I don’t wish to judge but that was the time Republicans started really making a play over the name “Hussein” in Obama’s name and the picture was circulated of him in the Muslim garb.

Margin: Regarding the poll you reference, all I can say is that it is the exception to the trend.

So, according to Obama’s camp, out of a total of 370 delegates, Clinton gained 4…

Less than half of the delegates Obama won in DC alone.

Is this true?

If so, why the hell is she carrying on?

Well it’s not entirely true, she won something like 12 in Ohio but only 4 in Texas so far, and for all intents and purposes it looks like she’ll probably end up having only won 8 from both states. Obama’s wins in smaller states have pretty much all been bigger.

I can only imagine she’s carrying on because she’s personally invested a lot of her own money in to this campaign out of the belief she would win, and because the media love to use the phrase “comeback” in relation to Clinton. In all seriousness though, while it was possible she would pull out after Tuesday, the real likelyhood is that she will hang up her coat at North Carolina when Obama wins by 10%+ and effectiely wipes out all of the work she has done this week.

If she’s still in after North Carolina she’s going to start looking desperate, she’ll have lost more smaller states, Obama will ease slowly ahead in pledged delegates, and it is entirely likely he’ll show he still has plenty of money to burn and super delegates begging to join his side. There is a point that she will simply become a Mike Huckabee, or worse a Romney, and I don’t know that if she ever has an intention of getting the presidency in the future that she wants to become that person.

There is still a plausible scenario where she can win: the campaign dynamic changes (a revelation, a change in media narrative, a defection etc……), she wins one or two surprise states, she goes ahead in the head-to-head with McCain, she gets a lead in a popular vote, so she can make a strong case to the super-delegates to support her….

The above scenario is not likely but it is not entirely remote either. The Clintons are experienced enough to know that while you have a chance you stay exactly where you are. Obama still has some work to do though he is the clear favourite at this stage because he will win more pledged delegates.

http://www.e8voice.blogspot.com

Well, she won Ohio and that’s incredibly important to anyone come the General Election.

But Obama has shaken up pretty much every other traditional viewpoint.