Results thread: Childers makes it 3 in a row for Dems, Clinton triumphs

2am: With all precincts reporting, Clinton held on to a strong margin: 67% to 26% for Obama. John Edwards got 7% of the votes. The delegate breakdown is almost as good as Clinton could have hoped for as she gains 20 delegates to Obama's 8. This includes a 4-2, 4-2 and 5-1 split in the state's 3 congressional districts. She won every single county of the state, holding Obama under 15% (as low as 8%) in some counties. Meanwhile in Nebraska, Obama won the beauty primary contest by 2% and 2,500 votes -- a good contrast for him in another very white state, though he had won the caucuses on February 9th -- the first in that series of 11 victories that sank Clinton -- with 68% of the vote.

11:45pm: In West Virginia, Clinton's margin is superior to 40% with 83% of precincts reporting. She is leading 67% to 26% for Obama, as weak a showing as the polls were predicting. If numbers hold as they are, this could mean a delegate allocation as good for Clinton as 20-8.
In Mississippi, meanwhile, Childers' final margin is an 8 percent victory, a stunning feat in this conservative a district and a significant improvement over April 22nd. This will send shockwaves through the House GOP in the coming days, with some predicting a few additional retirements. And don't forget that there is a contested Senate race in Mississippi in November.
In Nebraska, finally, Scott Kleeb has won the Democratic nomination for the open Senate seat. The GOP's Mike Johanns is heavily favored to keep the seat but Kleeb will attract attention from national Democrats. Also, Nebraska Democrats were holding a (beauty) primary today, confirming once again how difficult the playing field is for Clinton in caucuses: On February 9th, Clinton lost the caucuses 68% to 32% (and trailed by 8 delegates). In today's primary which allocates no delegates, she is leading by 10,000 votes with 3/4th of the votes counted.

10:15pm: MS-01 is called for Democrat Travis Childers!
This is the third special election in a row won by Democrats and leaving the GOP in a state of true disarray. They can't explain this one away by blaming a flawed Republican candidate. And while this might not seem like a huge surprise given that Childers almost won in April, just remember what was being said about this race as late as April 21st... It was a second-tier race at best in a district Bush won with 62%.
Tate County finished reporting with a slight improvement for Childers. Meanwhile, Pentiss County left no hope for Republicans, giving 86% of its vote to Childers. The Democrat's 2,000 vote margin will likely increase with the last fifth of precincts reporting.

10:10pm: DeSoto County is done reporting: Davis increased his lead since April 22nd by an impressive 2,000 votes, with 75% of the vote. But he had gotten 81% 3 weeks ago and, with his strongest county done, he still trails Childers by 1,100 votes. Davis can still count on Tate County but that county is much smaller than Prentiss, which is Childers' base. Not that I am willing to call a race before the AP but...

9:50pm: I am not sure where Davis can get the votes to close the gap. With 64% reporting, the margin is down to 2,000 votes and 2%. But that includes 73% of DeSoto County now -- and Childers has 1,000 more votes than the first round while Davis has yet to reach his previous total. Meanwhile, of the 7 counties that have yet to report anything, Childers won 5 three weeks ago.
Meanwhile in West Virginia, Obama is failing to get 30% with 38% reporting. He trails 64% to 29%. Edwards' name was on the ballot, and he is getting about 7% right now!

9:45pm: This election is looking increasingly good for Democrats. LaFayette County fully reported transforming a 200 vote loss into a 300 vote victory for Childers, with turnout more than double. DeSoto is now 55% reporting and, while Davis is getting 73% of the vote, that is not enough to close the gap with Childers whose biggest county hasn't even started reporting.

9:35pm: More than half of the precincts are reporting and Childers is 8% -- or 3,500 votes -- ahead. Keep in mind that DeSoto County has still a long way to go, but Childers' strongest county (Prentiss) has yet to report. It gave the Democrat 83% of the vote on April 22nd. It is Panola County's turn to bring good news to Childers. Three weeks, Davis led by one vote in this county. Today, more than 5,000 voters went to the polls instead of 2,100 (a huge turnout increase) and Childers is leading by 700 votes with only one precinct outstanding.

9:25pm: With 41% reporting, Childers is leading by 6%. More great news for Childers as counties are finishing reporting: (1) Yalobusha County: With all precincts reporting, Childers transformed a 21 vote loss 3 weeks ago into a 400 vote lead (59% to 41%). This is not necessarily the most important county in the district, but it does suggest that Childers is not hurting from the increased turnout: Turnout is about 150% of what it was on April 22nd. (2) Chikensaw County: Here again, turnout doubled and Childers increased his share of the vote from 67% to 73%. African-Americans are voting in greater numbers and Childers leads Davis by 500 votes votes more in the county alone.

9:20pm More than a third of precincts is now reporting and Childers is down to a 6% lead. But Childers is getting some great news from Lowndes County. With 18/22 precincts counted, this county is tied with Davis 6 votes ahead. Three weeks ago, Childers trailed by 400 votes and got 43%. Also, Webster County just became the first county with more than one precinct to have reported; the margin is the same (+200 votes for Davis) but turnout has almost doubled so this is obviously a good showing for Childers who improves his percentage and did not suffer from increased turnout.

9:05pm: Numbers are now coming in faster from MS and the turnout totals are indeed very different. In Chickasaw County, with half of the precincts reporting, Davis is already at his total from three weeks ago Childers isn't even at half of his... Things look better for Childers in Marshall County, where it looks like African-American turnout is helping him. DeSoto has started reporting and is naturally helping Davis, though Childers is (for now) at 26%, versus 17% 3 weeks ago. With 20% reporting, Childers is on top with 55% and 1,700 votes.

9:00pm: Results are now trickling in from both races. In West Virginia, Clinton is leading by 24% with 5% of precincts reporting.
In Mississippi, it does not look very good for Travis Childers if we look at a key county. With 16% reporting, he is ahead 59% to 41%. But Lee County -- which Childers won with 58% and 1,700 votes is more than 75% reporting and Davis has already surpassed his April 22nd total while Childers is 900 votes under. It looks like there is increased turnout that is helping the Republican.

8:25pm: No votes have yet been reported in either contests (I am following the MS results at the Clarion-Ledger) but Clinton wasted no time sending out an email celebrating her victory in West Virginia and vowing to press forward, sounding a defiant tone and refusing to concede that the race is over:

After tonight's tremendous victory here in West Virginia, it's clear that the pundits declaring this race over have it all wrong. The voters in West Virginia spoke loud and clear -- they want this contest to go on. I'm listening to the voters -- and to you.

With your help, I'm going to carry the energy of tonight's victory into the next contests in Kentucky and Oregon... We've proved conventional wisdom wrong time and again in this race. We did it again tonight in West Virginia. Let's keep going.

8:00pm: Still no votes are being reported in WV but the polls have closed in Mississippi. In worrisome news for Democrats, DeSoto County, the district's biggest county that is also Davis's base (he got 81% here on April 22nd) ran out of ballots and had to reprint some -- suggesting that turnout was very superior to the first round's. Less than 13,000 voters came to the polls in that county on that day, but 17,000 ballots were printed today. Overall, turnout is up throughout the county. In a district that is as Republican as MS-01, the higher the turnout the more difficult it becomes for Democrats. They can have hope that most of that turnout comes from black voters, but DeSoto running out of ballots increased turnout still confirms why it is much easier to pick-up a seat like this in the first round than in the runoff (see CA-50 a few years ago).

7:30pm: Clinton triumphs in West Virginia. Surprise, surprise, the race was called as soon as the polls closed.
Exit polls suggest a roughly 2:1 margin in Clinton's favor, who would then get about 66% of the vote. That's about what polls were suggesting -- though perhaps on the lower end of what Clinton was allowed to hope for. Note, however, that only 51% of voters were women which is a much smaller proportion than we are used to seeing in Democratic primaries. Clinton got 73% among voters with no college education. 69% in households with less than $50,000. In further proof that this has little to do with operation mischief, registered Democrats voted for Clinton more than did independents. 21% of voters said that race was an important factor for them, and 84% voted for Clinton; she got more than 60% of those who said it wasn't a factor.

Original post: Welcome to the third results thread of the month of May. Appropriately, the first concerned the special election in LA-06 and the second the Democratic primaries in IN and NC. Today, two elections await us: the primary in West Virginia, which Hillary Clinton is expected to win handily, and the much more suspenseful special election in Mississippi's 1st district.

In West Virginia, the question will be Clinton's margin and how low she can manage to keep Obama among blue-collar voters. Too huge a loss would certainly be embarrassing for the Illinois Senator considering his campaign is already claiming the nomination; and given that some networks have planned some coverage of the primary tonight, they would have little else to talk about than Obama's continued weakness among the working-class as well as some problematic exit polls from West Virginia: 51% of Democrats say that Obama agrees with Reverend Wright, versus 47%. Also, 75% of Clinton voters say they would be dissatisfied if Obama became the nominee, versus 61% of Obama supporters. Also, as many Clinton voters say they will support Obama in the fall as say McCain (36% versus 35%). These are not Republican voters creating mischief as West Virginia is a half-open primary in which only independents and Dems can vote in the Democratic primary.

In Mississippi, Democrat Childers came within 400 votes of picking up the seat in the first round on April 22nd. Since then, the GOP has done everything it can to nationalize the election and attach Childers' party affiliation around his neck (this is a district that gave 62% of its vote to Bush). Ensued massive spending on the part of the NRCC and DCCC (more than $3 million combined). Today, a last minute controversy erupted as the Democratic committee sent out this mailer accusing Greg Davis of ties with the KKK:

While the GOP is furious about what they see as race-baiting, note that the flier (rightly) accuses Republicans of having played the race-card first: “You’ve seen the TV ads attacking Barack Obama – trying to use race and religion to divide us.”

Explaining West Virginia, plus some Oregon polls

What is up with West Virginia, a commenter in the previous thread asks. Should we think of it as a racist a state? That's the impression one gets reading media commentary about today's primary.

As has been increasingly evident throughout this year, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have built extremely stable electoral coalitions and the breakdown of the vote among key constituencies has been remarkably stable since January -- Clinton wins Hispanics, the lower classes, voters with no college degree, blue collar workers. Obama wins African-Americans, the upper classes, voters with a college degree, white collar workers. In almost every state the demographics determined the results, with both candidates failing over and over again to make inroads in the other candidate's base (and it's not for a lack of trying, like Obama with Hispanic voters in California). The few times Obama broke the Clinton code (Virginia and Wisconsin mostly), the rewards were great.

West Virginia has a huge proportion of blue-collar voters and voters with no college degree, not to mention that there is only a small black population. If West Virginia votes the way every other state has voted, its demographic make-up guarantees Clinton a gigantic victory so there is nothing surprising in today's expectations. There is nothing particularly strange about West Virginia, about its voters or its racial dynamics. We've long known that Reagan Democrats are among the toughest groups for Obama. This is not to say that the 25% Obama is getting in the polls are not due to racism or that the Illinois Senator is not struggling because of racial prejudice. The point merely is that the issue here is not that much different than in other states so let's not be too harsh on West Virginia.

Whether the question of racism arises depends on how you want to explain the fact that blue-collar white voters are not voting for Obama. Clinton supporters would argue that Obama's rhetoric resonates more with the upper classes because it is more transcendent (Politico quotes a Democratic strategist saying that: (“What people don’t understand about Appalachia is that we’ve heard all this ‘hope’ and ‘change’ stuff since the English kicked the Scotch-Irish out in the 1700s. We’re ‘hoped’ out. Nothing ever changes out here. He’s got to come with some solid policies.”) Yet, it seems hard to argue that race doesn't play an important role as well. You can decide how much weight to attribute to both factors.

Also, let's keep in mind that sexism is also a huge issue, and one that Clinton has to fight herself in West Virginia. From a West Virginia voter as quoted by the Boston Globe, via Ben Smith:

"I'm going to vote for the colored guy," said Henry Ford -- "no, not that Henry Ford," the 87-year old retired carpenter in the Napa Auto Parts hat pointed out. "I don't dislike her, but I don't think a woman can be president of the United States. I don't think she can handle the job."

Not that such language is surprising considering congressmen are engaging in stunningly sexist rhetoric as well.

Meanwhile, Obama can look forward to Oregon's primary on next Tuesday where he seems to be solidifying his position according to 3 new polls. This could help him balance out awful news that is likely to come out of Kentucky.

• SUSA finds Obama to be ahead 54% to 43% and gaining ground among women. Note that 43% of voters say they have already voted (Oregon has a mail-in voting system) and Obama only leads by 1%.

• The Portland Tribune finds Obama crushing Clinton 55% to 35%. I believe this is the first non-SUSA poll of Oregon.

• Finally, PPP shows Obama leading 53% to 39%.

The Obama campaign is looking to clinch a majority of pledged delegate on May 20th. A large victory in Oregon would guarantee that they succeed.

Delegates don't take the day off, and neither does West Virginia

A lot is happening in the political world -- none more significant than a Clinton pledged delegate announcing he will vote for Obama at the convention -- but I will not be around to blog much today. I will be back this evening when results start trickling in from West Virginia (starting at 7:30pm ET) and Mississippi (starting at 8pm ET). Something tells me West Virginia will be called rather quickly, but it could be a long night in Mississippi's special election.

Just to highlight the fact that delegates aren't taking the day off, here's a quick rundown of today's four new Obama super endorsements bringing him to a net gain of 19 since Friday and of 8 since yesterday, versus a gain of only 1 for Clinton:

• Rep. Joe Donnelly from Indiana
• New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (an add-on from Louisiana)
• Roy Romer, the former governor of Colorado who said that the race "is over" on a n Obama conference call. The Obama campaign typically avoids such absolute statements.
  
• Anita Bonds, chair of the DC Democratic Party
  

And as I mentioned above, a county executive from Prince George in Maryland who has been selected as a Clinton pledged delegate is now saying that the race is over and he cannot not vote for Obama. Not only that but he will try the rest of the delegation to switch to Barack. The WaPo article notes that Jack Johnson was an Obama supporter until December, so I am not sure why the Clinton campaign even selected him. But whatever Johnson's reasons this is certainly a terrible blow to Clinton especially if it becomes the start of a trend.

Seeking to build on maverick image, McCain touts environment

While Obama has been increasingly turning to the general election, John McCain has been preparing for 4 month now (incredibly enough, that's how long has passed since Super Tuesday!). His latest move: campaigning on the environment. In what his campaign had advertised as a major policy speech on global warming, McCain earned the headlines he wanted today, for example the New York Times's "McCain Differs with Bush on Climate Change."

McCain plans to tout environmental issues in order to appeal to independent voters. With politicians like Schwarzenegger focusing on the environment, there is a growing drift away from the business Republicans' stance and independents especially are paying attention to the issue. McCain believes he can build on his maverick image with this issue and build a strong base by anchoring moderate Republicans and independents (who might be tempted by Obama) to his side. Remember, independents swinging towards the Democratic Party was a major reason for the country's dramatic turn leftward in 2006, and McCain is perhaps the only candidate Republicans could have nominated to stop the bleeding.

Another reason McCain will seize the environment is that this topic allows him to appear like a maverick without actually moving to the center at all: All he needs to do is offer a break with President Bush and given how dogmatically far-right the current Administration has been on environmental issues, pretty much anything McCain proposes will earn him centrist credentials. In fact, even professing that he "believes in global warming" could do the trick! Similarly, McCain was left looking like a lefty pacifist during the GOP debates just for opposing torture, something that most people wouldn't even have thought was an issue until a few years ago.

It's hard to give McCain credit for things as simple as believing global warming or opposing torture, headline like the New York Times suggest that he will get what he wants out of them: the impression of offering a different kind of Republican regime. And thus the fact that McCain's proposals fall short of what is needed to truly combat global warming goes mostly unnoticed -- for instance the fact that McCain's cap on carbon emissions is significantly inferior to even what the Lieberman-Warner Senate bill is proposing.

Finally, this story suggests an important advantage McCain has had in starting the general election in early February. He has been able to spend the first few months of the year courting the disaffected Republican base, secure the support of Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and various conservative leaders and burnish his credentials on the right. Now that the general public is paying more attention to him again, McCain has already taken care of that part of the equation and is ready to move on to the second part of any general election campaign -- moving towards the center.

Yet, Robert Novak reports today that some elements in the evangelical community are not ready to embrace McCain just yet because (1) they want to wait for Huckabee 2012 and (2) they consider that an Obama presidency is a plague that America 'deserves' for its sins. Novak adds that these groups remain marginal for now but that enough evangelical leaders remain skeptical by McCain that this could prove a major problem for the Arizona Senator in the fall unless he does some reach out. We saw in 2000 that evangelicals don't mind just sitting at home.

As supers endorse, focus switches to general: Obama travels to MI and MO and MoveOn channels Unity08

4 more superdelegates got off the fence today, and all endorsed Obama, getting the Illinois Senator that much closer to effectively and mathematically wrapping up the Democratic nomination and diminishing that much more the pool of uncommitted superdelegates. Today's endorsers are:

• Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, increasing Obama's sizable advantage among Democratic Senators
  

• Rep. Tom Allen of Maine, who is running for Senate and who emphasized , that the race is over

• Idaho state party chairman Keith Roark (Roark was upset at President Clinton for declaring about a statement in a stump speech that "You can drop me in the middle of Idaho where there's not a Democrat in 200 miles and an elk would applaud me on that." Roark responded: "If Bill Clinton had done for elk in Idaho everything he did for Democrats, we'd have far fewer elk.")

• Dolly Strazar, a superdelegate from Hawaii

If my calculations are correct, this means Obama picked up a net 15 superdelegates since Friday while Clinton only gained a net 1. With the Democratic primary getting ever so close to being resolved (though Obama should expect a wave of bad press after tomorrow's West Virginia primary and renewed questions about his ability to win the white working-class), the Illinois Senator is turning to the general election. [Note: Commenters seem to think that I am blaming Obama for skipping West Virginia here. Not at all! In fact, Obama is in the state today and I am not even sure why he chose to do that. The results are likely to be very bad for him and it allows the Clinton campaign to say that he tried. Given that the media is now largely portraying the primary as a done deal, Obama is looking away from Clinton and given that WV is a small and uncompetitive state it makes sense for him to skip it. And as to the comparison to Mississippi, I agree and made the same this morning; WV is May's MS. Note that Clinton did make some minor effort to minimize the margin there though she didn't really succeed.]

Tomorrow, he will be traveling to rural Missouri; on Wednesday, he will be in Michigan. Neither state has a primary coming up, indicating that Obama is now switching his campaign schedule to reflect the general election campaign -- not just the primary's. Of the 6 remaining states, only Oregon could be tight in the general election so the Obama campaign can't even reason that it would be good in the long term to campaign in primary states (as it was in, say, Pennsylvania and North Carolina).

The Michigan trip is particularly interesting, as Obama is going to meet with Democratic leaders of the state to talk about the issue of delegates. His campaign -- which was quite clearly responsible for MI and FL not holding re-votes, as you might remember -- is now pushing for the plan that would attribute 54% of delegates to Clinton and 46% to Obama -- a 9% margin instead of the 18% difference between Clinton's total on election day and the "uncommitted vote." Clinton is refusing this arrangement for now. At this point, this is very much related to the general election as well: The GOP has made no secret that they will criticize Obama in the fall in those rogue states for having been nominated without FL and MI's participation, and Obama would like to put that issue off the table, especially as polls show a surprisingly tight race in Michigan.

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Meanwhile, Move On is also getting organized for the general election. Today, the group that is supposedly at the Left of the spectrum announced the winner of its Obama in 30 second ad contest, in which people were invited to submit their own ad in support of Obama. The selected ad (which you can watch here) features a veteran, "life long Republican" who served under Reagan and George Bush I, who wants a president who represents both the Left and the Right and thus supports Obama. By choosing this ad, MoveOn embraces postpolitical discourse in its purest form: The desire to transcend left and right is quite literally the ad's only theme -- making MoveOn the newest (and most unlikely) proponent of Third Way politics.

While I am sure a lot of you will disagree about my criticism of it, the ad is explicit in painting Obama as a president who is neither at the left nor the right, taking a centrist third-way route in words that are even cruder than those the Obama campaign employs. This is even more so in another ad that was chosen among the finalists, "Purple" (you can watch it here), in which a Democratic voter paints the election map entirely purple in order to "work together" and leaves a Republican voter dismayed at the disappearance of the red and the blue. This ad takes Obama's postpolitical message to its caricature by making it as explicit and as un-nuanced as it could possibly be. And just like that, MoveOn (of all groups) is channeling Unity 08.

Southern polls: North Carolina and Virginia will be battlegrounds

The West Virginia primary feels very much like Mississippi's on March 11th. It comes the week after a major Election Day and there is no suspense, hardly even on the margin of victory. 24 hours from polls opening, a new poll from WV combined to a poll from Kentucky (which votes next Tuesday) confirms how difficult the Appalachians region is for Obama and how disastrous those two states' results could be:

• In West Virginia, Suffolk University shows Clinton leading 60% to 24% for Obama. That's 71% of the two-person vote, more than what Clinton got in Arkansas.
• While Clinton has a favorability rating of 70%, only 44% of Democrats have a favorable impression of him.
  

• In Kentucky, Research 2000 finds a slightly 'smaller' Clinton lead, 58% to 31%.

• Update: SUSA has released a new poll from Kentucky as well, finding Clinton ahead 62% to 30%, a 2:1 margin which is actually a 2% progression for Obama! In Eastern Kentucky, the Appalachian region bordering West Virginia, Clinton gets 84%! Could Obama fail to reach the viability level in a district?
  

Those numbers might seem excessive but they are certainly realistic. Not only are they confirmed by other polls but they also conform to what we have been seeing in districts surrounding West Virginia in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and in which Clinton routinely got 70%. Of the 5 counties of Ohio that border West Virginia, Clinton crossed 70% in 4 of them and got more than 77% in 3.

Obama's difficulty in winning these regions -- whether linked to racism or whether due to the primary's class-divide, with blue-collar voters dominating these regions being Clinton's base -- probably make West Virginia and Kentucky lost causes in the general election: With only 44% of Democrats having a favorable impression of him in WV, Obama has no path to a majority. That's not a concern in Kentucky but Democrats might have been looking to put West Virginia in play, as it had long been a blue state before increasingly turning red starting in 2000.

Note, however, that a series of polls taken this fall had Clinton and Edwards looking stunningly competitive in Kentucky, often leading Republicans, while Obama struggled (for example this one). As I have noted many times, both Democrats have regions of the country in which they would be clearly stronger than the other, and this is one Obama is weaker in. The Research 2000 poll referenced above also included some general election numbers with Clinton struggling but performing 13 percent better than Obama in Kentucky:

• McCain leads Clinton 53% to 41% and leads Obama 58% to 33%. Bush beat Kerry 60% to 40% in 2004.
  

Meanwhile, three new polls today show that Democrats would be very competitive in Virginia and in North Carolina, two states the GOP has not thought about in recent elections but which it could now have a lot of trouble defending:

• In Virginia, Rasmussen finds McCain leading Obama 47% to 44% and Clinton 47% to 41%. That's a great improvement for Dems since the end of March where their numbers had fallen to trailing by double-digits.
  
• Obama's favorability rating (51%) is lower than McCain's but he has more viewing him "very favorably".

• In North Carolina, Rasmussen finds similar results, with McCain leading both Democrats by 3 percent, 47% to 44% against Obama and 43% to 40% against Clinton. That's an improvement for Clinton but actually a slight drop for Obama who was tied with McCain in the last poll.
  

• Finally, Public Policy Polling released a poll from North Carolina as well, confirming that hte race is competitive without being quite as positive for Democrats than Rasmussen: McCain leads Obama 49% to 42% while Clinton trails 46% to 38%.

Virginia has been expected to be a swing state given the state's rapidly changing demographics and the Democrats' statewide success in recent years (Kaine, Webb). North Carolina is more of a surprise, after Democrats failed to put it in play in 2004 despite picking Edwards as their vice-presidential candidate. There is no question that forcing the GOP to defend both would be a great victory for Obama, but we should soon move beyond surprise that the state is competitive and start giving McCain credit for still being ahead. After all, Virginia and Colorado are two states who think of as red that the Obama campaign puts at the top of its priorities.

Two Senate surveys came with the polls listed above and they both bring good news for Democrats:

• Rasmussen confirms that Mark Warner is heavily favored to pick up Virginia's senate seat, as he leads Jim Gilmore 55% to 37%. 37% have a very favorable impression of Warner, and 29% have a somewhat favorable one (Gilmore's numbers are 15-33). It's hard to beat those numbers.

• More interestingly, PPP released numbers from the North Carolina Senate race. They find Elizabeth Dole leading 48% to 43% against Democrat Kay Hagan.

PPP's numbers are better for Dole than Rasmussen's shocking survey last week finding Hagan leading by 1%. But every poll that shows Dole this vulnerable is still a surprise. Hagan is considered a second-tier candidate at best, and few signs pointed to Democrats making it this tight this quickly with this little effort. Given that NC is (was?) about 10th on the Democrats' priority list, they will certainly take any poll that shows Dole under 50% and leading by single-digits.

House diary: As MS-01 nears, confusion surrounds Fossella

The next chapter of the GOP's special election nightmare continues in two days as voters in MS-01 will reconvene for the congressional runoff opposing Travis Childers and Greg Davis.
The DCCC is reporting new expenditures while the NRCC has given up on following over the past few days. The latest totals show that more than $3 million has been spent on the race by the congressional committees alone, with $1.8 million coming from the Democrats. Besides the NRCC, Davis received help from Freedom's Watch.

Prior to the first round of balloting on April 22nd, Childers was seen as having an outside chance but the race was not attracting as much attention as LA-06. But Childers came within 400 votes of the 50% threshold on that night; distancing Davis by 3%, he entered the runoff period as the favorite. This is not necessarily the best position to be for a Democrat who wants to win in an ultra-Republican district. Republicans have had ample time to air ads trying to nationalize the election and mobilize their electorate. On the other hand, the DCCC has been on the attack and similar GOP tactics did not work in LA-06 last week.

The fact that both parties continued to spend heavily on the race confirms that the race is likely to be a nail-biter, however tantalizingly close Childers got 3 weeks ago. Without providing details, Cook Political reports that "private polls suggest that the needle has not moved and that [the GOP's] chances of holding the seat in the runoff are 50/50 at best."

Meanwhile, confusion surrounds the fate of Rep. Vito Fossella (nicknamed Vino by New York's tabloids) in NY-13. Arrested for DWI-ing last week, Fossella was soon forced to admit that he was racing to see his second family in Arlington. This has predictably caused a political storm, with House Republicans quickly putting pressure on Fossella. House Minority Leader Boehner told him to think about his political future over the week-end.

As of Friday afternoon, numerous papers and news agencies (like Politico) were reporting that Fossella was about to resign ("within 72 hours"). But within 24 hours, Fossella's entourage started pushing back and indicating that Fossella would not only not resign but that he would probably choose to run for re-election in November ("I can cheat and run" is the New York Post's headline).

I have trouble understanding why Fossella should resign or not run for re-election. He was (1) dunk-driving and (2) fathered a child in an adulterous relationship. The first is much more significant, but other politicians have survived similar scandals (not to mention that it looks like Fossella had left DC and was racing to Arlington because his daughter was sick), so it looks like the pressures only come down to a sexual scandal. At least in the Spitzer scandal there were elements of heavy hypocrisy and illegal activities.

Fossella's case was boosted by a SUSA poll released on Friday that shows the congressman with a great approval rating (67%). 53% say he should run for re-election and only 32% think he should resign. These numbers also suggest that Fossella's re-election chances are not doomed should he decide to run again in the fall.

If he bows down to the pressure and resigns or retires -- and the NY papers don't seem ready to leave him alone -- Democrats will have a great chance of picking a seat (in a special election if Fossella resigns before July 1st). While Bush won the New York City district in 2004, Democrats have a slight edge and considering the dire state of the New York GOP, the fact that this is a presidential year and that NY-13 is in the most expensive media market in the country, this would be a tough hold for Republicans.

Slow day in polls and superdelegate news

Sunday is a slow news day. After 17 superdelegate endorsement in the space of 48 hours on Friday and Saturday, only 1 announced her support today: Young Democrat Crystal Strait announced she was endorsing Barack Obama explaining that, "Barack Obama has shown a real commitment to young voters in his campaign and in response young people have overwhelmingly voted and caucused for Obama in these primary contests."

However expected, this endorsement gets Obama one vote closer to the nomination as the pool of uncommitted superdelegates continues to decrease. Note also that 46 superdelegates (about a sixth of the total of "uncomnitted superdelegates) have yet to be chosen because they are add-ons states in which the state party has not yet finalized selections. Most of the add-ons (though by no means all) that are designated tend to already be supporters of a candidate, so the pool of superdelegates that Obama and Clinton are hoping to convince is even smaller than it looks; this is obviously bad news for Hillary.

Meanwhile, three new general election polls have been released this week-end. First, the LA Times-Bloomberg national poll:

• Both Democrats lead McCain. Clinton leads 47% to 38%, while Obama is ahead 46% to 40%.

• Clinton performs much better among voters with an income of less than $40K: She leads 50% to 29% while Obama is only ahead 43% to 45%. Among the highest-income group, however, Obama is slightly stronger than Clinton: She trails by 6, he trails by 1.

• The two Democrats also differ based on gender (Clinton leads by 21% among women, trails by 12% among men, Obama leads by 13% and trails b 3%), partisan affiliation (Obama is 9% weaker among registered Democrats but 10% stronger among independents). Contrary to what we might think, it looks like Obama's weakness among Dems comes from people who identify themselves as liberal (he is 13% weaker in that group), so not necessarily the white blue-collar base.

With the Democratic primary drawing to a close, polls testing both Clinton and Obama will become more rare so this might be one of our last opportunities to reiterate how different Clinton and Obama's general-election coalitions are and how remarkable it is that the two Democrats are arriving at roughly the same final numbers poll after poll considering the different paths they take to get there. Obama's relative weakness among women, registered Democrats and lower-income voters is compensated by his relative strength among men, independents and higher-income voters.

What this confirms is how different their two electoral maps would have looked and how the electability difference rests on a state-by-state basis rather than a national analysis. Rasmussen's new general election poll from Oregon, for example, confirms that Obama is much stronger in the Northwest (Oregon and Washington):

• Obama has opened a double-digit lead, 51% to 39%. Clinton has strengthened her position and leads 46% to 40%. Last month, McCain led Clinton by 6% and Obama led McCain by the same margin. Obama has always looked strong in Oregon.

• Rasmussen also polled Michigan, however, and finds troubling news for Democrats as McCain continues to be surprisingly strong. He edges out Obama by 1 percent, 45% to 44%, and is tied with Clinton at 44%.
  

Conventional wisdom would hold that Oregon is a tighter state than Michigan in the general election, but Obama's appeal to Western independents could help him put the Northwest away, concentrating on a state like Colorado; but he certainly cannot afford to lose a state with as many electoral votes as Michigan and the GOP is certainly preparing to make the argument that Obama was nominated on the back of Michigan voters if the DNC does not resolve the rogue primary mess in the weeks ahead.

Pledged delegate breakdown and superdelegate flow: Obama's math

Hillary Clinton is continuing her campaign despite the setbacks of May 6th and continuing to make her case to superdelegates. However decided the Democratic race now looks and however much Obama has now turned to the general election, this means that it remains important to keep a tab on the the pledged delegate breakdown and on superdelegate endorsements. After all, math will be the main factor that will force an end to this race sooner or later.

The first change to today's totals concerns a state that voted on February 5th: Colorado's totals have been modified from a 35-20 breakdown in favor of Obama to 36-19 -- a reminder of how much the caucus states contributed to Clinton's collapse. Consider that just in the 6 caucuses held on February 5th Obama amassed a lead of 80 delegates (almost half of his current lead) a clear indication of how huge a tactical mistake Clinton's campaign committed. The two other updates to the pledged delegate count concern the two states that voted last Tuesday -- Indiana and North Carolina.

North Carolina primary: Obama 56%-Clinton 42%

• Obama: 66 delegates
  
• Clinton: 49
  

Indiana primary: Clinton 51%-Obama 49%

• Clinton: 38 delegates
  
• Obama: 34
  

This brings us to the following total:

• Obama: 1591.5 delegates
  
• Clinton: 1425.5
• Remaining: 217
  

That's a differential of 166 which means that Clinton has to win 88% of the remaining pledged delegates to take the lead. Obama just has to get to the viability threshold of 15% in the remaining districts to hold on to his pledged delegate lead... That pretty much explains why even the Clinton campaign never mentions the possibility of taking the lead in pledged delegate anymore though they did venture today that they expected to be with 100 pledged delegates of Obama by June 3rd. For that to happen, Clinton would need to win 65% of remaining delegates -- 142 to his 75. This does not take into account Florida and Michigan despite many signs pointing to the possibility of some kind of resolution that would allow Clinton to pick up more delegates than Obama in those states; this would make the path to that 100 delegate deficit more plausible.

Meanwhile, the superdelegate flow continues as Obama solidifies his newly acquired lead among superdelegates. Obama got 6 new endorsements today (adding to yesterday's 8) while Clinton picked up 2 and lost 1:

• Endorsing Obama were Arizona Rep. Harry Mitchell, Virginia's Joe Johnson, Ohio add-on Dave Regan, Utah add-on Kristi Cumming and two Virgin Islands supers, Kevin Rodriguez and Carol Burke. Rodriguez had previously endorsed Clinton, so he represents a net gain of 2 for Obama.
• Endorsing Clinton were Massachusetts add-on Arthur Powell and Texas Rep. Ciro Rodriguez.
  

This means that 17 superdelegates have committed to a candidate in the space of 2 days, a dramatic quickening of the endorsement pace that bodes well for Obama's hopes of wrapping this up sooner rather than later. There are about 250 superdelegates who remain uncommitted and Clinton should be winning those about 4:1 to have a path to the nomination. That today's ratio is 6:1 in favor of Obama confirms that the Illinois Senator is rapidly approaching 2,024.

A new graphic on the New York Times' website tells the story of Obama's dramatic comeback among superdelegates since March 4th, as even Clinton's Ohio and Pennsylvania survivals did not allow her to reverse Obama's momentum among supers (Note: The graph looks particularly dramatic because the origin point is 199 delegates for Obama, not 0):

Are Democrats expanding the Senate playing field?

The Senate playing field has long favored Democrats who are defending only one competitive Senate seat (Louisiana). On the other hand, it has long been clear that Republicans are threatened in a long series of states, starting most obviously with open seats (Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado) and with vulnerable incumbents in Democratic-leaning states (New Hampshire, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine). Over the next few months, Democrats unexpectedly put in play Alaska thanks to Senator Stevens' ethicalo-legal troubles and Mississippi after Trent Lott's surprise resignation. They also increased their chances in Kentucky where Mitch McConnell looked weak throughout the fall, and two conservative states that suddenly opened up -- Nebraska and Idaho.

For those keeping track, that's more than the 9 seats Democrats need to reach a supra-majority in the Senate. Yet, the road to 60 seat got progressively stiffer as Democratic recruitment remained very weak in Kentucky and Nebraska, as Idaho looks unlikely to shake its red leanings and as early signs and polls signaled that Democrats might have a tougher time than expected in Maine, but also in Oregon. Taking out those 5 races from the equation left a still-impressive 7 Republican-held seats that looked truly competitive in the fall.

After a brief period in which Republicans tried to put New Jersey in play through an offensive so confusing that even I am not sure where we were left at, it looks like Democrats are now looking for ways to expand the map. And if recent polls and fundraising decisions are any indication, they might be succeeding:

• In Texas, two polls in one week showed Senator Cornyn with only a 4% lead over challenger Rick Noriega.

Given how disastrous Texas has been for Democrats over the past decade, few people have been paying attention to this race, ranked a second-tier at best in most assessments. But Cornyn has lost a lot of ground since a series of polls showed him posting huge lead against the Democrat in the fall. Cornyn has never been a particularly popular incumbent and if Noriega capitalizes on the state's growing Hispanic community this race could still close to the end.

• In North Carolina, a stunning Rasmussen poll finds Democrat Kay Hagan jumping to a lead against Elizabeth Dole, 48% to 47%.

State Senator Hagan overwhelmingly won a contested primary against Jim Neal on Tuesday. Pre-primary polls showed little electability difference between Hagan and Neal but confirmed that Dole was vulnerable. Today's poll, however, suggests that Hagan is benefiting from a strong post-primary bounce and that she has the potential to truly put Dole in danger. Confirming that this is reflective of an anti-Republican mood rather than of Dole's unpopularity, the incumbent's favorability rating is better than Hagan's, as 56% of respondents have a favorable view of Dole.

North Carolina Democrats already feel boosted by partisan shifts in their direction, as Democrats have dramatically expanded their registration lead, with 2.6 million North Carolinians now registered Democratic versus 1.9 million Republicans. Among people who have registered since January, 56% are Democrats and only 7% Republican. Similar shifts are occurring around the country and putting many Republican seats in danger; they should also serve as a warning to McCain who should not take states like NC for granted.

• In Oregon, a new Rasmussen poll finds GOP Senator Gordon Smith struggling against both of his Democratic challengers, 45% to 42% against Jeff Merkley and 46% to 40% against Steve Novick.

Oregon was long listed as a competitive state but Smith was showing little sign of vulnerability in polls. The Democrats' failure to recruit a top-tier candidate also raised questions as to the viability of their targeting Smith. But this poll should reassure them that Smith is vulnerable -- polling under 50% -- and that there is room for them to seriously contest the race. The primary is on May 20th.

---

With those 3 states looking increasingly competitive, there are 10 Republican-held states that could very realistically fall in Democratic hands as of now. That's obviously a huge number -- and still more than very unlikely to come to pass. But the more the DSCC expands the map, the more seats they will be likely to pick-up, positioning themselves to claim a super-majority in 2010. By stretching the NRSC thin, Democrats know that the GOP will have to give up on its most vulnerable seats, starting with NH, CO and NM (this is what happened in 2006 when national Republicans gave up on Ohio weeks before Election Day).

They are thus trying to put even more seats in play than those 10 to test the vulnerability of Republican incumbents across the country. Roll Call reports that the DSCC in now sending 10 staffers to Oklahoma to help state Senator Andrew Rice in his long-shot campaign against Senator Inhofe.

Note: The Senate and House rankings will be updated by the end of the month. Sorry for the delay!

Superdelegates flow towards Obama, give him his first lead

Whatever path might remain for a Clinton nomination gets that much narrower with every superdelegate that endorses Obama -- and the Illinois Senator got the support of 8 of them today alone, making this one of his most successful days super-wise and allowing him to grab the lead among superdelegates for the first time. This is obviously an important development

Clinton's rationale has long been that there is no reason for her to drop out as long as superdelegates are reluctant to endorse Obama; every few weeks there is heavy speculation that Obama is about to get a wave of new support but those rumors have never materialized. Since his Indiana and North Carolina, however, there has been an unmistakable pick-up in the pace of endorsements; today, there was a flow:

• Among the day's most important endorsements was that of Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey who switched his support from Clinton to Obama. The reason this is significant is that Payne is the African-American superdelegate to switch his support since John Lewis did a few months ago. We wondered whether Lewis' move would lead to an erosion of Clinton's support among black superdelegates but that never materialized. Payne insisted on the need for party unity.

• In particular, all eyes are on Rep. Clyburn, one of the highest ranking House Democrats who is still officially undeclared but who has been very critical of Clinton for a while; his praise of Obama today only confirms that the Illinois Senator can count on Clyburn's endorsement, sooner or later.
  

• Obama got two other congressional endorsements today: Rep. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon.

• One representative rallied behind Clinton, Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania; Carney represents a very tough district for Democrats.

• Obama's other endorsements are: South Carolina state party vice chair Wilber Lee Jeffcoat, Maryland DNC member John Gage, California DNC member Ed Espinoza (who became famous for anonymously running the site Mr. Super), an other California DNC member Vernon Watkins (who declared "The election is over, everybody knows that. Obama has won.") and New Mexico add-on Laurie Weahkee, who was selected under somewhat controversial conditions a few weeks ago when she insisted she was undecided but Clinton supporters within the state party protested that she had privately committed to Obama.

With Obama now in front in the superdelegate count, it the support of the establishment that switches from one candidate to the other; this, of course, is only a symbolic shift but it has enormous significance. Clinton needs superdelegate to reverse the vote of pledged delegates and for that to happen she needs to close with a lead of at least 150 superdelegates. But she has firmly behind and there is no sign that she in a position to get her lead back; after all, many of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates are not likely to be truly undecided (Nancy Pelosi, Clyburn, Donna Brazile).

The flow of superdelegates towards Obama strikes two terrible blows to Hillary Clinton. First it undermines her rationale to stay in the race at a time the media is increasingly unwilling to entertain the notion of a suspenseful race (see the Washington Post's Dan Balz). Second it removes the last metric in which she was still ahead. It also means that many superdelegates are no longer willing to be patient and are looking to put an end to the race even more quickly than Howard Dean and Senator were asking them to.

Today's ray of hope for Hillary Clinton pales in comparison to this deluge of bad news. RCP does calculations and concludes that Clinton could still regain the lead among the popular vote under certain models of calculations. This is something she was counting on to give superdelegates who wanted to endorse her some cover but even this scenario had seemed unlikely after Obama's large victory in North Carolina and many had concluded that the popular vote contest -- like the pledged delegate race -- was over. Yet, RCP notes that if turnout in Kentucky and West Virginia is high and Clinton gets 40%+ blowouts as polls are predicting, it could put her in a position to claim at least this metric with a large victory in Puerto Rico. This might seem unimportant, but Clinton truly needs something to justify her continuing candidacy if she is serious about staying in the race until June 3rd (and even beyond).

Friday polls: Obama suffers WV blues, Cornyn struggles again

3 days after North Carolina and Indiana, Hillary Clinton is showing no sign of withdrawing from the race; no matter how low her chances to get the nomination (and Rasmussen has just announced that he will soon cease his tracking poll of the Democratic nomination race!), this means that we should pay attention to the upcoming primaries again. If Obama performs disastrously, it would put him on the defensive again in the final weeks of May, perhaps buying Clinton the time she needs to continue to June 3rd and embarrass the Illinois Senator.

This applies to Kentucky, of course, but also to West Virginia which votes in 4 days:

• A new ARG poll shows Clinton leading 66% to 23%. Obama fails to get 20% among white voters.
• An Orion Strategies poll with too large a margin an error finds a similar margin, with Clinton leading 63% to 23%.

We have long known that Obama's worst region was the Appalachians, as he lost by similar voting margins in the counties of Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina that border Kentucky and West Virginia; given the demographic determination of these elections, it doesn't appear there is much Obama will be able to do to avoid this large a defeat (to put things in perspective, only Arkansas has voted for Clinton by a bigger margin).

Meanwhile, we got a series of general election polls in the past two days. Keep those numbers in mind for they will serve to determine whether Obama gets a bump from his being proclaimed the presumptive nominee in the coming days and weeks:

• In Rasmussen's tracking, Obama leads McCain 47% to 44% (the first time he has led for consecutive days for two months) and Clinton leads 48% to 43%. In Gallup, Obama leads McCain by 1% and Clinton leads by 2%.

• UPDATE: How frustrating must today's Gallup numbers be for Hillary Clinton. Not only does Obama fail to pull away despite this being the third day after NC and IN, but Clinton has suddenly jumped up to a 48% to 44% lead against McCain (which I believe might be her biggest lead ever in Gallup tracking) while Obama leads 46% to 45%.
  

• A Rasmussen poll in Missouri, however, has McCain leading both Democrats. He has a 48% to 41% lead against Obama and 45% to 43% against Clinton. Last month, he led Obama by 12% and Clinton by 9% so this is actually quite an improvement for Democrats. Obama's favorability rating is only at 46% -- equal to Clinton's and much lower than McCain's.

• In Georgia, Rasmussen finds McCain comfortably leading both Democrats, 53% to 39% against Obama and 48% to 37% against Clinton.

• In Rasmussen's Wisconsin poll, McCain leads yet again -- this time in a blue state -- beating both Democrats 47% to 43%. This is a big boost for Clinton who led by 11% at the end of March. Obama's favorability rating -- at 51% -- is lower than McCain's (58%). Note that McCain's "very favorable" rating is much lower (only 14%), suggesting that his support is soft.

• A Research 2000 poll from Texas, meanwhile, does not confirm how tight Rasmussen had found the race last week (both Democrats within single-digits) but the race is not as much of a blowout as in past cycles: McCain leads Obama 52% to 39% and Clinton 53% to 38%.

• Finally, Hotline published its latest national poll and finds Clinton leading McCain 46% to 43% and Obama ahead 47% to 43%. McCain leads both Democrats by double-digits among independents, a troubling sign, but both Democrats have markedly improved their showing since the end of March when they both trailed. Proving how much McCain overperforms, Democrats lead the generic presidential ballot by 14% (15% among independens).
  

Democrats were used to leading Republican candidates in a whole list of red states back in 2007... until John McCain became the nominee. Trailing in both Wisconsin and Missouri is not a good place to start for Democrats considering they are supposed to be the heavy favorites to win this year's election. The question then is how these numbers will evolve in the coming weeks. Will Obama's becoming the presumptive nominee and the media's round of celebration boost his numbers, in a traditional post-victory popularity boost? Will Clinton's staying in the race blunt the impact of that?

Finally, a few very interesting down-the-ballot polls:

• Research 2000 polled the Texas Senate race and found a 47% to 43% lead for Senator Cornyn versus state Senator Noriega. Back in September, Cornyn was leading by 16%.
• This is the same margin of a Rasmussen poll released a few days ago.
  

• Meanwhile, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon is opening a large lead against both his Republican rivals for the open gubernatorial race. He is leading state Treasurer Sarah Steelman and congressman Kenny Hulshof 51% to 35%.
  

Both of these polls are great news for Democrats. Missouri is the most vulnerable gubernatorial seat and Nixon has basically been running since 2004. Governor Blunt's surprise retirement actually gave the GOP a bit more hope but it looks like Nixon could put this away quickly. As for Texas, the fact that two polls within one week show this tight a race is truly shocking and suggests that we were wrong to completely overlook this state in assessments of this year's Senate picture. Noriega always had the potential to make the race competitive but TX-Sen was a second-to-third tier race at best: Too big and conservative a state, too well-funded an incumbent, not a well-known enough challenger. We shall know in the coming weeks if the DSCC can count on expanding the map to the Lone Star State.

Candidates meet with supers, Clinton nixes Michigan plan

As the Democratic Party seeks to find a way out of its nomination imbroglio, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama met with uncommitted superdelegates over the past two days. Yesterday, Clinton held meetings at the DCCC headquarters; today, it was Obama's turn. Campaigns surrogates are insisting that there are scores of superdelegates who are "undeclared" but privately committed to Obama though those endorsements have been very slow to materialize. Today, however, Obama got two congressional endorsements: Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina and Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington. (Speaking of, Politio's chart of all supers by state and by function is the best page I have yet seen to track superdelegates.)

Pressure might be mounting on the Clinton campaign but they are showing no sign of being hurried. The Michigan Democratic Party recently proposed a plan to divide its state's pledged delegate 69-59 and speculation was that Clinton would accept it now that she was in a less powerful position. But her campaign nixed the Michigan proposal this afternoon and insisted that they would accept no plan that did not award her the number of delegates she would be entitled under the January 15th vote (73). The campaign spokesperson said: "This proposal does not honor the 600,000 votes that were cast in Michigan's January primary. Those votes must be counted."

Contrary to talk that the Florida Democratic Party was ready to follow the lead of its Michigan counterpart and find its solution to the delegate mess, a party spokesperson is now saying that there is no deal being prepared in FL.

I take Clinton's quick counter to the Michigan plan to be the first sign since Tuesday that she is serious about staying in the race until primaries are over in June. The quest to seat the FL and MI delegates and give a "voice" to those two states has become a central rationale of her candidacy. Accepting a deal like Michigan's (which would probably be followed by a similar one out of Florida) would remove that rationale without getting Clinton that much closer to Obama. Clinton today wrote a letter to her rival in which she asks him to help her campaign find a solution to the FL and MI mess. She (correctly) blames his campaign for nixing plans of holding revotes in both states and phrases the issue in terms the party's general election chances:

One of the foremost principles of our party is that citizens be allowed to vote and that those votes be counted. That principle is not currently being applied to the nearly 2.5 million people who voted in primaries in Florida and Michigan. Whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee will be hamstrung in the general election if a fair and quick resolution is not reached that ensures that the voices of these voters are heard. Our commitment now to this goal could be the difference between winning and losing in November.

Note that Obama can afford to accept Clinton's conditions in both FL and MI without undermining his hold on the nomination; if anything, it would make Clinton's path more difficult as she would no longer be able to portray herself as the sole defender of the rogue states' voices.

Update: The Clinton campaign is now also claiming to have superdelegates who have privately committed, as this Politico story reports. This confirms how little credence should be given to these private commitments -- including those of the Obama campaign. However, this article is the most realistic take on the race that Clinton staffers are accepting to take as they are professing that they are attempting to gauge who among the uncommitted supers is looking to move towards Hillary to judge whether she remains viable.

Increasing speculation about Clinton's intentions

On Wednesday morning, as the political world was abuzz with speculation that she was about to drop out of the race, Hillary Clinton got up, traveled to West Virginia and launched into her stump speech, pledging to stay in "until there's a nominee."

24 hours later, Clinton is showing no signs of slowing down despite suggestions that she is only trying to stall for time before deciding what to do, just as Mitt Romney did after Super Tuesday. Thus, speculation has only increased over the past day. Is Clinton pulling a Romney, or is she putting herself in the position Mike Huckabee was in between February 5th and March 4th, or does she actually believe she still has a chance at the nomination?

The Huckabee option is the most plausible. Clinton is professing her commitment to getting every state a chance to vote and she sees no reason to drop out before June 3rd, especially since West Virginia and Kentucky will be such good results for her. As I suggested yesterday, it might actually be good for Obama to have her in the race until May 20th to avoid losing those states to someone who is no longer running. Now, some in the Clinton campaign are circulating the date of June 15th as the end of primary season. It is indeed likely that as soon as all states vote a significant number of superdelegates would feel forced to pick sides, leading to Obama reaching the majority of delegates. (Update: Terry McAuliffe, Clintonite extraordinaire, is saying that the race will be over by early June and will not go to the convention floor.)

But for now, superdelegates are not moving. Obama picked up four yesterday, including one who switched from Clinton to Obama, but Clinton also obtained two new superdelegate votes (so a net gain of one). Obviously, Clinton is the one who needs a 4:1 split so such news is great for Obama, but the Clinton campaign must be amazed that such a high number of superdelegates are still refusing to declare themselves when they could force an end to the race by rallying Obama's side. More specifically, the stability of Clinton's endorsements is nothing short of remarkable as constant speculation of wavering Clinton superdelegates -- in particular African-Americans -- very rarely leads to any actual switches. Ben Smith reports that Barack Obama's visit to the House floor this morning is leading to more talks of wavering superdelegates as Clinton superdelegates hugged the Senator and asked him for an autograph. But as long as superdelegates are not moving the Clinton campaign feels that there is no reason for them to call it quits either.

The second major factor is Michigan and Florida. Clinton has proclaimed herself the defender of these states' voting rights and it is likely that she will refuse to quit the race until an arrangement is found concerning both. This could also be to Obama's advantage. The Illinois Senator does not want to open himself up to fall attacks by Republicans that he was nominated on the back of those two crucial swing states; he might not need to win Florida (though it would hurt Democrats if McCain doesn't even have to defend the state, moving resources elsewhere) but Michigan is definitely a must. If the delegations are seated after Clinton drops out, that would not give a voice to Michigan and Florida at all. [By the way, think how different our conversations would be today if Michigan and Florida were revoting on June 3rd as it once seemed likely.]

Given how far in front of Clinton Obama now is in terms of superdelegates, he is now in a position to accept an arrangement in Florida and Michigan (provided the DNC is on board, of course). Thus, the Michigan Democratic Party is proposing yet another plan to split delegates: Seat the full delegation, allocate 69 delegates to Clinton and 59 for Obama. This margin is midway between a tie and the allocation based on the January 15th vote (a night that also saw the survival of Mitt Romney, as some of you might remember), pretending that Obama is "uncommitted." (Though some uncommitted voters might have been Edwards or Biden who could have moved to Clinton, this is clearly the only way of dealing with "uncommitted.")

This plan had already circulated a few weeks ago but had gotten nowhere. Now that the Clinton campaign is ready to accept less and that Obama can afford accepting more, perhaps the plan will be adopted, resolving the Michigan mess. Note that, while I have not seen this specified anywhere, such a plan would surely restore the right to vote of Michigan superdelegates, raising the bar of a convention majority a bit higher and increasing the pool of superdelegates -- two things that could prolong Clinton's staying in the race further if she is looking to stay in until Obama reaches a majority.

Down ballot: Fossella headed towards exit, fields set in NC and IN

Last week, Rep. Fossella (NY-13) was arrested for DWI in Arlington, Virginia, with his breath test resulting in a 0.17, twice the Virginia legal limit. This caused a mini-scandal but Fossella was not immediately considered to be in that much trouble; after all other politicians (starting with Bush) have survived DWI charges. But reports are emerging (for instance from the Washington Post) that there could be much more to the story, and that what started as a drunken arrest could be the prelude to a sex scandal.

Now, speculation is increasing that Fossella will soon announce that he is not running for re-election, perhaps even resigning before his term is finished. Governor Paterson would then have to decide whether to hold a special election or just wait for November. The Washington Post's piece starts with "The consensus on Capitol Hill is: Vito is finito" and Roll Call is already reviewing the names of potential candidates that could replace him.

This district covers all of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn and is the only seat of New York City represented by a Republican. An open seat in NY-13 would immediately become one of the Democrats' top opportunities. Not only does it lean Democratic but New York Republicans have been slowly but surely declining into oblivion and their troubles would only be worsened in a presidential year.

So much has gone wrong for the NRCC this cycle -- recruitment, special elections, accumulation of open seats, fundraising trouble, first year in the minority and scandals like this -- that a double-digit gain for House Democrats is looking increasingly certain.

Meanwhile, the congressional committees have lost all sense of restraint in the MS-01 special election; those 400 votes that Childers was missing to get to a majority on April 22nd are costing a lot to the DCCC which appears to be reporting new expenditures every day with 6 more to go. After a new $200,000 report tonight, the DCCC's total is brought to $1.6 million (here's one of the recent ads that the DCCC is running against Greg Davis); the NRCC has spent a little over a million.

That both parties are spending this much suggests that the race is remaining very tight (they are conducting polls, so they know what is going); no matter how close to a victory Childers was 2 weeks ago, Greg Davis definitely retains a chance to keep this district. Remember that Davis is not a deeply flawed candidate the way Oberweis was in IL-14 and Jenkins was in LA-06 and MS-01 is more Republican than both of these districts.

Finally, the North Carolina and Indiana primaries yesterday did more than damage Clinton's chances for the presidential nomination. They also set the field for some important down-the-ballot races. I alluded to the victors in the results thread last night but here is a quick rundown:

• NC-Sen: State Senator Kay Hagan crushed Jim Neal and can now run against incumbent Elizabeth Dole. While the Republican is heavily favored, most polls show that Hagan could make a move under the right circumstances. A second-tier race with potential to turn more competitive.

• NC-Gov: Both favorites held on to their parties' nomination by narrow margins. Democrats nominated Lieutenant Governor Beverly Perdue and Charlotte Mayor Patrick McCrory won the Republican nod. This sets up a much more competitive race than was expected a few months ago. McCrory was the only Republican with a chance of winning in a state that is red at the federal level but often votes Democratic in local races.

• IN-Gov: Former representative Jill Long Thompson won the tightest race of the night (50.3%), overtaking Schellinger's lead in the last minutes as Lake County finished reporting. She will now face Governor Mitch Daniels to become the state's first female governor. Polls indicate a toss-up race.

• House races: All incumbents won their re-election battles last night despite an uncommonly high number of competitive races. In the most watched race of the night, North Carolina anti-war Republican Walter Jones survived a challenge from a pro-war candidate 60% to 40%; in Indiana's 7th district, Andre Carson held on with a plurality of the vote a few weeks after winning his grandmother's seat in a special election. Both are favored to win the general election.
  

Decisively winning North Carolina, Obama effectively ends the primary race

By now, Iowa seems like the most distant of memories, Super Tuesday appears like the most anticlimactic election day, and we can barely remember what all that fuss around driver's licenses was about. It took more than five months of voting, calculating delegates, caucusing, campaigning, counting supers before Democratic voters deigned putting an end to the cruel game that they had been playing since the beginning of March by refusing to put the candidates' out of their miseries and giving just enough to both for the race to go on unaltered. Yesterday, their verdict was more decisive.

Obama's first two match points were on Hillary Clinton's serve, and she saved them both. In North Carolina, Obama finally got to serve out the match, managed to do what he had not done since Wisconsin -- win big when he needed to. Clinton's Indiana win was too narrow to offset the North Carolina blowout, as Obama put an effective end to the race for the Democratic nomination.

Just like on March 4th and April 22nd, I had outlined three thresholds Clinton had to pass: (1) Will she be able to stay in the race? (2) Will her victory be credible? (3) Will it change the fundamentals of the race? Clinton's win in Indiana (51% to 49%) and loss in North Carolina (56% to 42%) make the answers very clear: Those 2 percent in Indiana allow her to stay in the race if she so chooses but her victory was certainly not credible enough for her path to the nomination to remain viable.

Clinton needed a comfortable victory in Indiana and at worst a narrow loss in North Carolina; she also needed exit polls to tell the story she wanted, namely that Obama's numbers among blue-collar white voters had collapsed so low that superdelegates should rally around her. None of these things happen. Obama's total among NC white voters (37%) was lower than previous Southern states (he got 43% in Georgia, fir instance), but it was not a significant margin. And Obama managed to overperform once more among black voters, sealing Clinton's fate. Obama's showings guarantee that he will clinch a majority of pledged delegate and make his popular vote lead unassailable. In fact, the Obama campaign is now reportedly considering striking a deal on Florida and Michigan to take those issues off the table. That should tell us how confident they are that the race has stopped being competitive.

With very little good news out of yesterday's results, Clinton lacks a rationale to present to superdelegates; perhaps most importantly, she also lacks a way to continue fundraising when her campaign is clearly in financial trouble (it was revealed today that Clinton had loaned her campaign more than $6 million over the past month, most of it before Pennsylvania).

Clinton is vowing to press on and let the remaining states to vote, fighting on until "there's a nominee." In an email to supporters in which she repeatedly references the last "28 days of voting," she writes, "I'm going to keep fighting for what I believe in until every voter has had his or her say." But Clinton seems to have given up on a confrontational attitude and they are unlikely to try to draw major contrasts from now on. Ben Smith reports the lack of contrasts in Clinton's stump speech this morning. This is essentially the position Huckabee was in before he dropped out on March 4th.

The question, of course, is whether superdelegates, the media, and Democratic elders will let her go on. The Obama campaign has clearly chosen to not pressure her at all, allowing her the space to come to her decision by herself without feeling that she is being forced out. Senator McCaskill insisted that it was absolutely not time for Clinton to drop out. Rep. Clyburn, who remains uncommitted but has been very critical of Clinton recently, said the same thing.

Will superdelegates start rapidly moving towards Obama? Former presidential candidate George McGovern, a prominent Clinton supporter, urged her to drop out this morning and announced he was endorsing Obama. McGovern is not a superdelegate, but his switch could influence other Democrats. Obama already picked up four superdelegates since last night and this despite reports that his campaign is holding on to superdelegate announcements to avoid putting too much pressure on Clinton when the results speak for themselves. And Clinton actually got a new superdelegate herself as North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler announced he was backing her.

Obama is now looking to turn his attention to the general election, with his campaign announcing that he would be traveling other places than primary states in the upcoming states. But Obama should be aware that Clinton retains the ability to damage him in the weeks ahead if she stays in. Even if Clinton gives up on an intense campaigning schedule, she would remain heavily favored to win West Virginia and Kentucky big, forcing Obama to defend his appeal to blue-collar white voters once again and putting him on the defensive, however close he has to finalizing his nomination. (Marc Ambinder points out that it could be worse for Obama if Clinton drops out tomorrow and still ends up winning WV and KY; so perhaps the Obama campaign wants Clinton to stay in two more weeks, at least nominally. He also points to another reason Obama might want Clinton to stay in a bit longer: If Clinton campaigns amicably for the next month it would help heal the party and it could also allow the Obama campaign to pretend to resolve the Michigan and Florida mess while the race is still technically competitive.)

Finally, Clinton's results last night deal a harsh blow to her chances to be Obama's vice-presidential pick. Had she stayed in until the summer, Obama would have had no choice but to select her. Now, Clinton will not remain a powerful enough force for Obama to have to pick her. Yet, Obama will have to get to work as soon as possible to reconcile his party. Yesterday's exit polls pointed to the urgency of his task, with less than half of Clinton supporters in both Indiana and North Carolina staying that they will vote for Obama in the general election.

But Obama can start worrying about that in a few days. For the night undoubtedly belonged to Obama. Despite all the gloomy forecasts and his supporters' conviction that Clinton's quest was ruining Democratic chances, the primary's competitive stage is over with still 4 months to go before the convention. And the remaining uncommitted superdelegates who wanted to avoid picking a side at all costs (see Emanuel, Rahm) probably got their wish.