Well, since Politico said it…. March 23, 2008

Welcome to the party, Politico. Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen tell you what I’ve been saying for weeks. The main point: Hillary isn’t going to win. Can’t win. Period. Let’s get over it and move on.

Follow on points: the notion that she can win is media-as-business hype. It makes little sense for the media to call this since they get millions of stories and web hits out of drawing the drama out as long as possible.

Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.

It goes on brilliantly and if you read closely, you’ll see much of the same I’ve been saying loudly since the Beltway Primary and a bit more quietly before that.

“Big states” is spin, not reality March 21, 2008

The last remaining iota of Hillaryspin is this: Clinton won the big states and Obama didn’t, so therefore Clinton should get the SuperDelegates because she is a better candidate and is going to run better against McCain. Most coverage I’ve seen has been uncritically biting on this bait and repeating it as received wisdom. Here’s the reality: only three “big” states will be in play in November (# of electoral votes in parentheses):

• Ohio (20)
• Pennsylvania (21)
• Florida (27)

(By “being in play” I mean in the past two presidential elections they went for one candidate by less than 5%.) Hillary won Ohio, will likely win PA and we’ll have to put FL in the “who knows?” category. But dropping down into the next level, these are the “semi-big” states that have at least 10 electoral votes and will be in play:

• Michigan (17)
• Virginia (13)
• Missouri (11)
• Wisconsin (10)
• Minnesota (10)

Of these competitive “semi-big” states, throwing out MI, Obama not only made a clean sweep of the four but trounced HRC in three of them (only Missouri was close).

PA and then? March 14, 2008

At this point I’m watching only SurveyUSA and ARG in Pennsylvania.  Interestingly, they’re off by 8 right now.  SurveyUSA has a 19-point lead for Clinton, ARG has an 11 point lead.  I expect they’ll converge close to April 22.  Watch for the “undecided” count (3 in SurveyUSA, 6 in ARG).  In Mississippi almost the entire poll undecided count went to BO.  Most polls had HRC ~37 which is what she ended up with.   They had BO in the mid-50’s but he got 61%.

My “advice” for BO remains the same: stay low in PA for the next three weeks and let HRC play herself out.  As we saw with Ferraro’s implosion, Hillaryland will give BO items to work with.  The important thing now is how he works with them.  He’s got to sound above the fray on the petty attacks but take it to her on the real meat.  Right now he’s getting there (”she’s never answered that phone at 3am either”) and he should keep on it, slowly ramping up lines like that.  He needs to make voters doubt her suitability to be prez in the same way she has successfully gotten people to doubt his.  Her biggest weakness is that people are far more likely to see her as untruthful and scheming and BO needs to find a way to play on that.  All that said, HRC is still going to win PA, so the question is by how much?  BO should accept that if the primary were held today he’d lose by about 15.  How much can he knock that down by and how’s he going to do it?

After PA there are eight states left and Obama will win at least five of them.  The playing field for the Dems remains the same as it did before TX and OH: HRC has no room left to tamp down that 100-delegate deficit.   She may have the momentum now (she clearly does) but she doesn’t have the time.  Even if there is some FL and MI miracle, she will not overtake BO by the convention, either in delegates, states, or the popular vote.  So the question remains: if your only hope left is that the SD’s vote with you and overturn BO’s leads in delegates, states and popular votes, are you willing to suffer the consequences?  Obviously the answer is yes for the Clintons, but what is it for everybody else?

What’s going to happen after tomorrow March 3, 2008

I won’t bury the lead: Everything tomorrow turns on Texas. It’s possible for HRC and BO to tie in TX vote count and for one of them to garner a significant delegate edge anyway. If Obama does that, he’s home free no matter what happens in Ohio. If Clinton gets the edge it’s a much more muddled picture.

In terms of vote tallies, I still have no idea how tomorrow will turnout. My expectation is that Clinton wins Ohio by 4-6. It’s not clear how the NAFTA story flap plays there (didn’t I tell you it was going to get nasty?). Conventional wisdom would have the story hurting Obama by hitting him in the place most think is Ohio’s most crucial issue. But I wonder if Clinton isn’t treading into the same dangerous territory that lost her South Carolina when Bill overplayed his hand on sleaze attacking. If the Ohio voters see more sleaze than substance in this latest play they may turn for Obama. (John McCain’s classy move may remind people how a campaign could run, and how it likely will run, if the match up is McCain-Obama. If it’s McCain-Clinton, all bets are off.)

Fortunately, with this kind of last second maneuver (i.e. no polling to gauge it) we won’t know until tomorrow night. Clinton’s polling lead is certainly a comfort to her campaign, and despite what I wrote about the differences between polls and votes favoring Obama, past history is a bad guide for this state. At this point, what Obamaland is hoping for is a close 50-50 split in the Ohio delegates, which is possible even if Clinton wins big (big is anything greater than an 8-point spread). If Obama gets that delegate split, it’s a win for him. If Obama does anything better than a 2-point loss in Ohio tomorrow it will be because of a backlash against negative campaigning and/or an underpolling of Obama voters.

In Texas, polls are all over the place, averaging to a tight tie, while the prediction markets give Obama a solid lead (remember that the prediction markets are just predictions of outcome, not spread). Even if they tie in votes, Obama can win the delegate count because of the district effect I discussed earlier.

Aggregating Ohio and Texas, I expect the delegate count to be very close to 50-50. Ignore the spin that will follow from Mark Penn. A tie in TX and OH delegate would be a big win for Obama and will essentially seal it up for him (more on that in a minute).

D scenarioitis for post-March 4 March 2, 2008

Most likely outcomes post-March 4:

1- If, no matter how the states fall, won delegates between the 4 states is a close 50-50, Hillary most likely stays in the race and fights like hell through the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, but Obama still wins in the end. Less likely: Hillary waits until Wyoming (March 8 caucus) and Mississippi (March 11 primary) both produce big wins for Obama, then concedes. Not likely: Clinton concedes by March 7.

2- If Obama wins more than 200 of the 370 delegates (or let’s just say 55% since the full accurate delegate count might not be known for days) but they split OH and TX and both are close, then Hillary most likely stays in for at least another week while she considers her options (realistically her only remaining option is SuperDelegate fiat), but concedes after Wyoming and Mississippi both produce big wins for Obama. Less likely: she stays in it through April 22. Not likely: she concedes before March 7.

3- If Obama wins 55%+ of the delegates and wins both states, most likely Hillary concedes by Friday the 7th. Less likely: she concedes March 5 or after March 11. Not likely: she keeps going through April 22.

4- If Hillary wins at least 55% of the March 4 delegates, she stays in and ramps up her campaign, which will include at least one quote from somebody like Mark Penn that she now has a “mandate.” (I am guessing that specific word will be used. The logic will be, Obama was the frontrunner and she the insurgent, so since she got more delegates she pulled off a surprise win which indicates the voters….blah blah blah…anyway, you can hear it coming. Aside from the public logic, the real reason to invoke “mandate” will be to reinstitute the “inevitability” mantle that was used before SDT.)  Less likely: even with the March 4 win in delegates, she still concedes after March 11 knowing that she cannot make up the delegate difference unless she wins Pennsylvania by an astronomical margin.

5- If Hillary wins both TX and OH, even if the four-state delegate count is ~50-50, most likely this race will continue through April and likely will not end with Pennsylvania. Less likely: one candidate wins PA big and the other concedes. Not likely: Hillary concedes before the PA primary because with only a 50-50 split on March 4 it is exceedingly unlikely she can pull even in the delegate count by August.

Looking forward to Tuesday February 29, 2008

On the D side there are 370 delegates at stake between Texas (193), Ohio (141), Rhode Island (21), and Vermont (15). Ohio is currently the hardest outcome to predict. Signs are still pointing to a small Clinton win, but volatility in both the prediction markets (high) and the polls (less, but still present) makes the outlook murky. With at least 12 polls by 10 different pollsters in the past few days, most giving a 5-10 point lead to Hil, her lead seems safe. However, some things to consider:

• Repeat polls by SurveyUSA (solid track record) and Rasmussen (not so much) both show a 10-point Clinton lead falling to five points a few days later (both most recently taken on the 25th).

• No pollster has surveyed more than 862 “likely voters” and most are at n=600. At most, only about 0.01% of registered voters are being sampled. That would scare any rational statistician. Political pollsters get irrational quickly.

• The difference between the final outcome and the polls depends on whether any voting groups are being systematically underpolled.

For the most part, Obama’s tally margins over the polls have been greater than Clinton’s. In other words, if you look back at every state that has voted so far and compare final outcome with final polling averages, often the match was good (within a couple percent), but when it wasn’t, it was much more likely to underestimate Obama’s percentage and overestimate Clinton’s. This effect was particularly big in Georgia (Obama polled at 14 and won by 35), Wisconsin (Obama polled at 7 and won by 17), Tennessee (Clinton polled at 22 and won by 13), Alabama (polls tied and Obama won by 14), and to a lesser extent Oklahoma (Clinton polled with a 29-point lead and won by 24), even New York (Clinton polled at 20 and won by 17) and other states. Some states were right on (NJ, CT) and only one reversed the effect (in California Hillary polled by 6 and won by 9).

(Why) Are we still talking about the SuperDelegates? February 28, 2008

This much should be clear already: Hillary Clinton is not going to win enough delegates on Tuesday from the OH, TX, VT and RI primaries to erase Barack’s post-SDT (SuperDuperTuesday for you new to this report) run. Even conceding Clinton wins in Rhode Island and Ohio (which I wouldn’t do, but just for sake of argument), Barack is still going to win more delegates than she on Tuesday, padding his lead in the delegates-won-by-vote column. This will cement Clinton’s status: barring a last second bizarre collapse by Mr. Obama, the only way she can win the Dem nomination is by a SuperDelegate fiat.

The problem is, while Barack will have a decent natural lead in pledged delegates (again, those won by vote; despite what many media outlets call them I consider SuperDelegates to be unpledged no matter what they say publicly), he won’t have 50%+1 lead. That leaves the door a sliver open to the SD’s making the final decision and Mark Penn figuring out a clever way to justify it.

But despite Geraldine Ferraro’s absurd NYT op-ed trying to convince everybody that having the SD’s decide the race over the wishes of D primary and caucus voters is a good thing (because she invented the system), I give the benefit of the doubt to the rationality and good judgment of the majority of the SD’s who remain publicly unpledged. This block of about half of the SD’s (roughly 400) who have not yet entered a public preference will wait until the primary picture is crystal clear. It doesn’t matter that Hillaryland brought on war-tested Harold Ickes to try to win the SD’s to Clinton’s side. The presence of Ickes and other arm wrestlers (for both sides) matters only if by the time Montana and South Dakota Dems vote, there is a very, very close 50-50 split between delegates won.  That is exceedingly unlikely.

The point is, don’t be distracted by the SD hype.  If we do get to a point that the SD’s matter — really, really matter — then the D party is in big trouble.  Everybody, even the Clinton camp, realizes this.  Which, of course, is why you are only hearing HC’s camp talk about SuperDelegates and Florida and Michigan delegates.  It’s the only hope left, and although it’s a slim one, when it is your only life perserver you have to cling to it, don’t you?