First, the thresholds that were reached yesterday:
- Hillary won Ohio by more than 8 (she won by 10)
- She won Texas by 3
- She won Rhode Island by bigger, not smaller, than the poll spread
- She won the RI-VT delegates 19-17
Delegate counts still aren’t completely in for Texas and Ohio, but as of right now Hillary has a bit over 55% of the delegates in Ohio, getting to another magic number I had set for her. Anyway you slice it, Clinton had a smashing day yesterday and exceeded all the thresholds I had put up there as markers for her staying in through Pennsylvania (April 22). In reality, though, what really matters is the (still not fully tabulated) Texas delegate count. The Texas count determines how realistic it is for Clinton to pull into a tie with Obama by the time Montana and South Dakota vote on June 3. But as TX will likely come out very close to a tie when all the counting is done, there’s little left for Clinton to make up. Realistically, this race is over. Practically, it continues.
Reading through the TX and OH exit polls - the pages and pages of exit poll numbers - two things caught my eye. First was the gender breakdown in who voted: women by 57%-43% in TX and by 59%-41% in Ohio. That didn’t matter in Ohio as Hillary still won more men (in the exit polls), but Obama won more men in Texas. More importantly, though, was how well Clinton scrambled in the last few days. Questions like “how important were the recent debates to your vote?” strongly favored Clinton. People that decided their vote in the last three days also strongly favored Clinton. The momentum shift is especially clear in the Ohio exit poll, but exists in the Texas poll. People who made up their minds a month ago loved Obama but from there it went to Clinton.
Over the next few days most of the punditspeak will be trying to sort out why momentum went to Clinton. Was it her debate performances? Was it that her attacking made a dent? That the media woke up and started asking the questions of Obama that Hillaryland was trying to get them to ask? That the negative campaigning worked? The Bradley Effect? That the inevitable backlash (see Finally… section) against Movement Obama came? My guess is that the most conventional answer over the next few days will be that Hillary’s message about Obama’s lack of experience started to stick. Maybe, but the exit polls from OH and TX show that “top candidate quality” was change over experience by 2-1. The answer is a little of all of these, and something more amorphous.
Going from here, here’s what I think is going to happen: see-sawing in momentum is inevitable. Happens over a baseball season or over a basketball game, happens to corporations, happens to political campaigns. Obama’s big wave was bound to crash and it did. The Rockies were bound to lose eventually, and they did. Unfortunately for the Rockies the season ended with their crash; fortunately for Obama, the season’s not over yet. Obama is a smart guy and will figure out how to respond to the things that built Clinton’s momentum into TX and OH wins. The pivotal question is, where is the momentum on April 21? Can Hillary keep it high until then? Or does it make a natural swing back? Hillary’s biggest problem now is sustaining that momentum through the rest of the race, all the way through June 3, and that’s going to be damn-near impossible.
Unfortunately for all of us, what yesterday’s outcome probably means is another two months of unproductive hard campaigning with lots of shaded name-calling, thinly-veiled spin, crabby sniping, etc. It leaves the door propped open just enough for some daylight to peek through, and it gives the Clinton campaign hope that if they keep up the hard pressure, they can crack Obama and win this thing. Sadly for the Dems, that means months more fuel for the R’s in November.
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