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For a good half-hour there, John McCain’s campaign was having a coronary. Virginia was teetering between their candidate and Mike Huckabee. When it tipped, the state—and its 60 winner-take-all delegates—went to McCain. He ended up with 50 percent to Huckabee’s 41 percent. But it was close enough that McCain can’t exactly claim the party is rallying around him. Some showing for the party’s presumptive nominee.
Huckabee, on the other hand, isn't just alive. He has all but sucked the life out of Mitt Romney’s desiccated campaign and used it to reanimate his own. Early exits showed evangelicals favoring Huck over McCain by a whopping 40 points. He beat McCain handily in the South and the Shenandoah Valley. Without Romney to split evangelicals and social conservatives, Huckabee appears to have lapped them all up.
This doesn’t change the fact that John McCain will be the party’s nominee. After picking up most of the 113 delegates at stake today, he will wake up tomorrow beating Huckabee by at least 500 delegates and closing in on the 1,191 needed for the nomination. (See up-to-date numbers here.) His relatively narrow victory reflects the deep uneasiness many Republican voters still feel toward him, even now that he’s been essentially declared the nominee.
Keep in mind that the state’s circumstances favored Huck. In an open primary like Virginia’s, Obama no doubt sucked independents away from McCain. Plus, many moderate Republicans probably think of the race as settled, and therefore didn’t turn out for McCain. Huckabee fans, on the other hand, know he can still use their help. Nevertheless, for all McCain’s appeals to conservative unity, he doesn’t seem to be getting through.
So what’s in it for Huckabee? Shouldn’t he realize that the longer he stays in the race, the more he undermines the mandate of the party’s inevitable nominee? Doesn’t he realize that McCain has him beaten on the board? Perhaps. But for Huckabee, it’s not about the numbers. “I didn’t major in math,” he has been saying. “I majored in miracles.” But unless he can miraculously turn back time and stop Fred Thompson from entering the race, or alter the GOP’s winner-take-all primary system, or call down a lightning bolt upon John McCain’s head, he’s going to be disappointed.
More likely, Huckabee will drop out once he feels he has made his point—but before he has ticked off McCain. So far, he has managed to maintain friendly relations with his opponent. But that will become harder and harder if Huckabee appears to be undermining McCain’s candidacy with his presence. Who knows, maybe McCain will offer him the vice presidency just to get him off his back.
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We knew the Democrats were more excited about their nomination race, but the Republicans' apathy reached new lows in Washington, D.C.
With 88 percent of the precincts reporting, the Democratic turnout is 102,783, while the Republican turnout is 9,456* 5,127. (There are about 29,000 registered Republicans in the city, overall.) These numbers will change as the rest of the precincts report, but the ratio probably will not. More than 10* 20 times the number of Democrats came to the polls than Republicans. Ten point eight* That's twenty Democrats for every one Republican, to be exact. In the 2004 general election, John Kerry outdrew George Bush 10-to-1. The city-wide ratio is estimated at around 10-to-1, as well.
UPDATE 10:55 p.m.: I originally miscalculated the number of Republicans who voted, and therefore the ratio of Democrats-to-Republicans.
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It’s difficult to remember, but it was Super Tuesday only one week ago. Since then we’ve seen 31 states and territories go to the polls and caucuses. In just seven days, Hillary Clinton went from in-control front-runner to holding-on-for-dear-life candidate.
If politics was sport, then the Democratic division standings would look something like this:
|
W |
L |
PCT |
Streak |
| Obama |
23 |
12 |
.657 |
Won 8 |
| Clinton |
12 |
23 |
.343 |
Lost 8 |
(These tallies exclude Michigan and Florida, which we’ll treat as exhibition games.)
It’s easiest to key in on that shiny "streak" stat, which shows that after tonight’s wins, Obama will have now won eight states and territories in a row. Factoring in likely wins in Hawaii and Wisconsin, he’ll probably be 10 for 10 going into March. But his streak amounts to little more than empty momentum. It’s his overall win/loss record that’s starting to become overwhelming.
This cycle, Obama has already won a majority of states, and it's soon to be a majority of states in the entire union. He has won 22 states and one territory, far outstripping Clinton’s number.
On top of that, Obama is building a tower of pledged delegates that could spear him the nomination. He’s already up by at least 80 delegates, and that number will only increase once we know the full results of tonight’s contests. It’s a lead that will be tough to knock down if Clinton doesn’t take a significant hack at it in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. (Obviously, that’s a big if.)
All of these metrics are important because Obama and others are peer-pressuring the superdelegates into supporting whoever has the most metrics on their side. As of now, there are three big-picture metrics the superdelegates can use as a rationale to place their support: winner of the most states, winner of the most pledged delegates, and/or winner of the most votes overall. Obama is nearly guaranteed a win in the first, is leading in the second, and is neck and neck with Clinton in the third. Assuming the superdelegates stick to those metrics (which is no guarantee), Obama is in good shape.
Does that mean Clinton has already lost? Absolutely not. But during the last seven days—and the last month and a half—it has become clear that Obama is the winner and Clinton is the loser.
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If God himself had designed a jurisdiction for the sole purpose of supporting Barack Obama, it might look something like Washington, D.C. The majority black population across the city, the elites in Georgetown, the college kids at GW and American—you have to look hard to find the enclaves that don’t support him. No surprise, then, that he won it. (NBC has called it; CNN hasn't.)
Still, it's worth nothing that he beat Hillary on her home turf. I mean that: You could argue that Washington, D.C., is as much Hillary’s home town as Little Rock, Ark., or Chappaqua, N.Y. No, the District never elected her. But she lived in D.C. for eight years, compared to eight in New York. That would make Obama’s D.C. win his first victory in Hillary-land.
It’s hard to extrapolate much from his victory without knowing specifics—how much he won by, who voted for him, and why. Did Hillary represent in Hispanic areas of Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan? How about the rest of white D.C.? Was Obama’s margin any less than expected?
Symbolic victories are overrated—and the District primary commands only 15 pledged delegates—but it can’t hurt to know that if you do end up in the White House, you’ll be surrounded by friends.
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Barack Obama’s win in Virginia is a small victory for Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine, who was the second governor in the country to endorse Obama. Kaine announced his support for Obama nearly a year ago, when the junior senator from Illinois gave the keynote address at the state party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Va.
The two men are fond of pointing out their odd similarities. Both went to Harvard Law School—as did both of their wives—though the two men missed each other by five years. On a stranger note, both of their mothers hail from El Dorado, Kan., population 12,000. Obama also campaigned for Kaine in his 2005 gubernatorial bid.
This win gives endorsing governors a nine-and-four record in the Democratic primary, according to the tally of superdelegates at the Democratic Convention Watch. (Our count does not include Iowa Gov. Chet Culver’s endorsement of Obama, which he announced after the caucuses.) Should Obama win Maryland tonight, as he is expected to do, this would make governors nine-and-five, as Martin O’Malley has endorsed Clinton.
Virginia used to be overlooked in presidential elections—one of those states that the cable news stations would color in red the moment the polls closed. But the last three statewide elections have gone to Democrats, and Kaine insists that the state will be in play for the Democrats in the general election whether Obama is the nominee or not.
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Sure, exit polls are notoriously unreliable and they don’t matter, but they’re all the data we have for a while. So, let’s delve into the juicy stats from the surprisingly close GOP race in Virginia:
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At
least one poll leading up to today's event showed McCain making strides among Evangelicals, but it looks like those numbers were very exaggerated. Half of the state’s voters were born-again Christians or evangelicals, and they favored Huckabee over McCain by 40 points.
- Sixty-one percent of voters said McCain was most qualified to be commander in chief, but 30 percent of that bloc still voted for Mike Huckabee anyway.
- Sixty-six percent of voters consider themselves conservatives (rather than moderates). Conservatives favored Huckabee over McCain by 23 points.
- Ninety-three percent of the Republican electorate was white. Sixty-one percent of Democratic voters were white.
- Sixty percent of Republicans said they listen to conservative talk radio. Huckabee led among those voters by 12 points.
- Pro-life Republicans are still favoring Huckabee over McCain (56 percent to 35 percent), while pro-choicers continue to ally themselves with McCain (64 percent to 24 percent).
We offer our usual disclaimer that these numbers can change. All stats taken from CNN’s stats.
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Roughly 0.00003 seconds after declaring Virginia for Obama, CNN posts its exit polls. (Disclaimer: DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU READ.) The main story is that Barack Obama has cut across demographics more than before by challenging Hillary among whites (48 percent to Clinton’s 51 percent) and winning among women (58 percent to 42 percent) and seniors (53 percent to 47 percent).
More tidbits:
- This is bizarre. Apparently only 84 percent of Clinton voters believe Clinton is most qualified to be commander in chief, while 16 percent think Obama is. Meanwhile, 99 percent of Obama voters believe he is most qualified. Perhaps this represents an electability argument for Obama, but it still seems odd that so many people would admit to voting for the candidate they believe it less qualified.
- Class still played a factor in the election, but less so than usual. Obama dominates in all regions except western Virginia, where downscale rural voters gave Clinton 54 percent of the vote. However, there was barely any difference between Obama’s victory margin among college grads and non-college grads. When broken down by yearly income, polls show that Obama won every tax bracket.
- Clinton eked out a victory among white voters and slammed Obama among white Democrats, 58 percent to 41 percent. But Obama dominated white independents, 64 percent to 35 percent. To the extent that he's cutting into the white vote, it appears to be primarily among independents. Blacks, however, supported Obama in almost equal numbers (roughly 87 percent), regardless of their party status.
- As in the past, last-minute deciders went for Clinton. Among people who made up their mind today, 51 percent voted for Clinton. Everyone else—people who decided in the last three days, last week, last month, and before—swung toward Obama.
- Listen up, Texans: Obama won the Latino vote with 55 percent. Granted, that's with Latinos comprising only 5 percent of the electorate. But until now they've been reliably pro-Clinton. Keep an eye on this number in Maryland and D.C.
- Obama may have won voters 60 and older, but his numbers are inversely proportional to voter age. In other words, his numbers decline among older voters. Conversely, Hillary’s trend upward.
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Barack Obama finally has a big-state primary win that the Clinton campaign can’t question. When he won the Illinois primary on Super Tuesday, it was because he had home-field advantage. When he beat her in Georgia it was because of the high number of African-Americans in the state. When he barely beat her in Missouri, the slim margin suggested it wasn’t all that important of a win. But tonight those caveats don’t apply. He won in the 12th-most populous state in the union, which is 20 percent black. And exit polls suggest he didn’t just win, he strutted to victory.
For Obama, this begins to erase another of his weaknesses. First, the pundits complained that he could win only caucuses—Super Tuesday proved that wrong. Next, they said he couldn’t reliably attract white voters—increased gains (and even some wins) among whites put that idea to rest. (Tonight he was essentially tied with her among whites.) The most recent knock was that he couldn’t win the big states—the ones that mattered in the election. Virginia isn’t the biggest win imaginable, but it should chop down some of the talk and boost Obama’s delegate lead. (We won’t know by how much until the proportional-allotment dust clears late tonight.) Plus, all three of tonight’s contests carry symbolic capital—if the Washington area favors Obama in the primary, then they probably wouldn’t mind him living there for four years. It’s like an early Valentine’s Day card.
For Clinton, this is a disappointing—but expected—defeat. She sank resources into the state, spending time there herself and sending Bill and Chelsea out on the trail for her. But her attention is already elsewhere. She’s spending the night in Texas, which doesn’t vote until March 4, and Bill Clinton is on his way to Wisconsin, which votes in a week.
Before tonight, Barack Obama had won nine primaries, but only two of them—Illinois and Georgia—were in the 15 most populated states in the country. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, had won six of them (including Michigan and Florida). But soon Obama will be tested again in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—all among top 10 biggest in the country. Now he knows that he can win big-state primaries. More importantly, Hillary does, too.
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One running sub-myth of the Clinton/Obama saga is that Obama is outnumbered. Hillary has Bill and Chelsea, the thinking goes, which gives her an edge on the campaign trail. She even had them touring as full surrogates in South Carolina. One of the campaign’s tensest moments came at the Myrtle Beach debate in January, when Obama snapped, “I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."
But to say that Obama is outnumbered is to discount his wife, Michelle. She has been a strong presence on the trail, often revealing details about her husband and their relationship that bring him down to earth. Her oratory skills rival that of her husband, and her bold words have drawn admiration and scorn alike. And now it looks like she’s drawing crowds that compete with Bill’s.
Michelle Obama spoke to a crowd of 1,200 at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore Monday morning. That’s not spouse numbers. That’s candidate numbers. (John Edwards regularly drew fewer than that in Iowa and New Hampshire.) More importantly, that’s former president numbers.
At a Bill Clinton rally at George Mason University, roughly 1,500 people showed up. Sure, Michelle was speaking at a highly pro-Obama historically black college. But George Mason is the second largest university in Virginia, and Bill is one of the most famous people on the planet. That their crowds are even comparable should say something about Michelle’s effectiveness as a surrogate.
Assuming her crowds remain strong, Obama’s defenders can stop describing the race as a triple team. Three-on-two is more like it.
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We will also admit that we had no idea Fred Thompson had endorsed John McCain. Maybe it’s because he released a stealth statement to the Associated Press on a Friday afternoon. That’s what you do when you resign after appearing on some escort-service phone list—not when you’re endorsing a presidential candidate.
McCain could have used a more public blessing, too. The conservative radio mouths calling for his head (Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter) might tone it down a bit if they knew that one-time GOP messiah Fred Thompson was backing him. A message from the ghost of Fred might also have blunted Huckabee's strength among evangelicals. But Fred has always done things his own way. It’s as if he wanted to back a winner but didn’t want to give McCain the satisfaction of a flashbulb handshake.
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Another Tuesday has arrived, which means we get to spend another night watching results crawl across cable news tickers. Before you snuggle up in front of the fireplace with Wolf, Matthews, or Brit, here are some things to keep an eye on.
Can Hillary win a single congressional district? At this point, you’re tired of everybody telling you the Democrats assign their delegates proportionally, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t say it again—Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. assign their delegates proportionally statewide and by congressional district. According to a recent poll, Clinton is going to lose both states' overall votes and is only within striking distance in two Maryland congressional districts (on the east by the bay) and one Virginia district (in the D.C. metro area). The two Maryland districts have an odd number of delegates up for grabs, which means somebody will walk away with a one-delegate advantage.
How will Washington, D.C.’s two districts differ? Since Washington D.C. is a (meaningless) congressional district in and of itself, its delegate assignments are roughly split into East D.C. and West D.C., which also means it's split along socioeconomic and demographic lines. Obama’s lead in the East is larger because of a larger African-American population. The West, meanwhile, is whiter.
If Obama wins in all three contests, will he have proven he can win a primary? The knock on Obama’s recent winning streak is that it has included too many caucuses. If he wins two medium-to-large-sized states tonight, will that make the criticism evaporate? It's doubtful, especially considering his flubs in Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey. But wins in Virginia and Maryland will give the Obama campaign some ammo to refute Clinton’s caucuses-don’t-count-as-much attack.
Can John McCain make serious inroads among evangelical voters? These three contests should get Mike Huckabee off McCain’s back. But Huckabee is unlikely to drop out of the race as long as his core base of evangelical voters continues to rally around him instead of around McCain. At least one poll showed McCain narrowly leading Huckabee among evangelical voters, but even a close second will be enough to impress.
What’s the margin of victory? It’s not about who wins and who loses anymore. Now everything revolves around the margin of defeat. If Obama emerges from tonight with only a 20-delegate haul, consider it a disappointment. The poll mentioned earlier puts his projected total in the low 30s. Thirty-five delegates or more and his night is a rousing success, even though the Obama campaign only assumed a nine-delegate advantage from the three states originally.
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If you thought counting delegates was hard, try counting superdelegates. Scratch that—don’t. Politico is doing it for you.
The project is a running tally of superdelegates, updated regularly as reports come in from news sources, readers, and the endorsers themselves. It’s a major undertaking given its specificity—you can break the endorsements down by state, type of official (party leader, governor, representative, etc.), and individual.
Clinton is ahead in the total count, with 229 superdelegates to Obama’s 138.5. (The .5 comes from overseas delegates, who count half.)
A few other juicy bits:
- Clinton and Obama are fairly close among governors (10-10, respectively), senators (12-9), and congress members (71-58). It’s among DNC officials that Clinton really takes the lead, with 125 to Obama’s 57.5. In other words, Clinton’s sway appears to be much stronger among party hacks than among elected officials.
- The candidates’ home states represent the most lopsided support. In Arkansas, Clinton has all 10 committed superdelegates. She also captures 38 New York superdelegates to Obama’s zero. In Illinois, Obama has 18 to Clinton’s one.
- Clinton has more delegates than Obama in all three “Potomac primary” jurisdictions. In Maryland, Clinton has three times as many committed superdelegates, although most of them still haven’t decided. This balance is likely to shift after today.
- Clinton trounces Obama in California, the state with the most superdelegates, 26-11. But another 29 are still holding out.
Update 5:39 p.m.: We should mention that Democratic Convention Watch has been doing this some time already, and Politico relies partially on its numbers. Because as we're learned, there's no such thing as too many delegate counts.
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Slate’s Josh Levin reports in with this dispatch:
As I left my apartment in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., this morning, I passed a small group of vocal Obama supporters. Closer to my polling place, a neighborhood church, I spotted a more famous Obama supporter: D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. The mayor extended his hand, smiled, and asked if I was going to vote. When I responded in the affirmative, he asked, “Barack Obama?” After saying something inarticulate like, “Uh, OK,” I went in and cast my ballot. By the time I emerged, Fenty had disappeared. That’s when I realized that the mayor had been standing directly between two signs that demarcated a no-electioneering zone. Which makes sense, considering that he was right in front of the church entrance.
For the legal sticklers out there, D.C. Code section § 1-1001.10(b)(1)(2)(A) says that, “No person shall canvass, electioneer, circulate petitions, post any campaign material or engage in any activity that interferes with the orderly conduct of the election within a polling place or within a 50-foot distance from the entrance and exit of a polling place.” And what’s Mayor Fenty’s likely punishment? “A person who violates the provisions of this paragraph shall, upon conviction, be fined not less than $50 or more than $500 or imprisoned for not more than 30 days, or both.”
Fenty’s press secretary, Dena Iverson, told me that the mayor would be out all day today encouraging District residents to vote for Obama. When told that the mayor had been encouraging this reporter right next to a pair of “no electioneering” signs, Iverson sighed, “Oh, great.” She continued, “The only other polling place I saw him at, he was doing it outside the signs. I will make sure he will not accidentally cross any lines he’s not supposed to.”
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After waking up in Washington, D.C., today, Hillary Clinton is flying to Texas, while Barack Obama is flying to Wisconsin. Think of it as claiming their turf for the coming battles.
But it’s not as simple as his-and-hers. Obama has won every contest since Super Tuesday. If he wins today’s Chesapeake hat trick, he’ll be positioned to take both Hawaii and Wisconsin next Tuesday. He would then have won 10 contests in a row—a daunting number, even if Clinton is favored in Ohio and Texas next month.
So, Wisconsin is her best shot at breaking Obama’s streak before the three-week break (break being a relative term). The state has 74 delegates, plus a good chunk of working-class Democrats, making it a sensible place to stage her blockade. To that end, Clinton’s camp today unveiled a new TV ad hitting airwaves across the state. The spot focuses on her health-care plan—which has become the centerpiece of her case against Obama—calling her “the only candidate for president with a plan to provide health care for every American.” (Now that Edwards is gone, Hillary ganks his line that universal care is “America's moral obligation.”) She has also agreed to a debate in Milwaukee; Obama has not.
Likewise, Obama can’t afford to rest on the would-be laurels of his hypothetical 10-state sweep. Texas’ Latino population (20 percent of voters in 2004) outnumbers its African-American electorate (12 percent in 2004). To that end, Obama has a new Spanish-language radio ad going up today across Texas, pointing out his decision to work as a community organizer “instead of accepting job offers that paid a lot of money.”
Their mutual turf invasion plans have one downside: Neither candidate has deniability in the expectations game. In a handful of caucus states, the Clinton campaign dismissed Obama’s victories since it hadn’t invested resources there. In Wisconsin, that won’t be an option. Similarly, Obama can’t say he isn’t trying in Texas. (Given his bulging coffers, not trying would be dumb.)
Expectations management isn’t everything. In the Democratic primaries, which allocate delegates proportionally, it doesn’t pay to ignore a state entirely. Better to reduce your opponent’s margin and delegate take as much as possible. But campaigns always have to factor spin into strategy. And this time, both camps will have trouble brushing off the coming races.