Sunday, February 10, 2008

Tough times for Hillary

Obama swept the weekend with big margins and is looking likely to clean-up on Tuesday in the Potomac Primary.

Probably the biggest setback for HRC was Maine, which some had suggested might go her way. It didn't, and didn't in a rather spectacular fashion, with Obama taking 59% of the vote to Hillary's 41%. Obama's wins in LA, WA, NB & the Virgin Islands were of similarly enormous margins: 21, 37, 36 & 80 points, respectively. On the whole Hillary pulled in 54 delegates to Obama's 111 on the weekend, allowing Obama to take a clear lead in pledged delegates and tie things up in overall delegates (depending on whose count of super-dels you use).

One thing of interest... some of these expectations came from an excel sheet that the Obama campaign inadvertently (or not, depending on who you ask) leaked out with their expected results for the rest of the primaries. Thus far they are out-performing their own predictions, a fact that may mean the release wasn't an accident but was just expectations setting. However, most of their predictions looked consistent with what would be expected... If you take them at face value right now it seems Obama can reasonably be expected to take a majority of the remaining states and pleged delegates. If he continues to beat his expectations at this rate (+11 LA, +17 WA, +16 NB, +40VI, +20 NH) then he'll likely tie up the nomination in the next month or so.

Clinton replaced her campaign manager today and has started to include more inspirational and poetic language into her stump speech.... including stealing one of Obama's lines. From an outside point of view it seems she thinks she has the Experience voters locked up and is trying to move in on Obama's strength in Change/Inspiration voters. My guess is she plays this through until Wisconsin to see if it works, then keeps riding it if it does.

At that point, if Obama's still getting landslide victories, it's fair to assume that her leads in Ohio and Texas will have slimmed. If she doesn't win on the 4th, she's toast. So she'll probably have to pull out all the stops post-WI and go at Obama as hard as she can, trying to change the dynamic... it could be an ugly couple weeks before TX & OH.

One final thing to think about. If Hillary does hold together and win with decent margins on the 4th, then there's a fair chance this will get decided by super delegates... just based on the math. The big Q right now is where do they go? The Clintons will be calling in all their favors, but if a majority of the states, delegates and votes go to Obama I have trouble seeing the DNC risking the wrath of it's constituents by overturning them.

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