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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Hillary Up 8 to 10 in Penn

She started out the evening with over 60% of the vote in the early-going and then settled down to anywhere from 8-10 percentage points over Barack Obama. At one point Hillary Clinton was as low as 6 points ahead of Obama, but then her numbers began to edge back up.

As of this writing, Hillary is ahead 55-45% in the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, with 75% of the vote tallied. She is expected to finish with an 8-10 point margin of victory.

The big news of the evening, however, is that Barack Obama appears to have blown his chances at winning the white vote in some sectors of the state. The demographics show that white voters overwhelmingly went Hillary's way, particularly in upstate Pennsylvania and in rural areas, where in some counties she beat him by over 20 percentage points.

One such county in particular shows Clinton winning nearly 70% of the total vote.

Obama, on the other hand, did not do as well as expected in suburban areas near Philadelphia, where he split the vote with Hillary or beat her by a much smaller percentage than projected.

The ONLY demographic group that Obama has won in Pennsylvania is African-Americans, where he beat Clinton handily.

Apparently, everyone else in Pennsylvania got the message that Obama sent their way, albeit unintended and inadvertent, that people in small towns and rural areas are bitter and cling to their guns and religion for comfort.

Obviously these particular voters disagree with Obama, for they defected from his ranks faster than bats out of hell.

So what does all of this mean for the Democratic Presidential nomination process?

First, Hillary Clinton is not out of it by a long shot. Second, she can claim a decisive moral victory, much greater than a 3-5% win which Obama would have claimed was tantamount to a loss. Third, she picks up a truckload of the popular vote. Fourth, she can make a case to the Democratic super-delegates that she is the one who has won most of the larger states. And fifth, she can legitimately raise the question of Obama's vulnerability.

The second big news of the night is the percentage of Democratic voters who state they will defect to John McCain if their preferred candidate loses. Over 20% of Clinton supporters say they will vote for McCain if Hillary loses. A whopping 30% of Obama voters say they will vote for McCain if Barack loses.

No doubt this is giving Democratic Party officials a bad case of gastro-intestinal malaise.

But stay tuned, folks. If somehow the Democrats can manage to pull off a ticket with both Clinton and Obama on it, it will be the Republicans hugging the toilet.

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